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Supreme Court Of India

(From : 2005 Cri LJ 1817 (Ker))

Hon'ble Judge(s): P. P. Naolekar, Lokeshwar Singh Panta , JJ

(A) Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (61 of 1985) , S.21— (as amended by Amendment Act 9 of 2001)Imposition of sentence - To be based on content of offending drug in mixture and not on weight of the mixture as such. When any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance is found mixed with one or more neutral substance/s, for the purpose of imposition of punishment it is the content of the narcotic drug or psychotropic substance which shall be taken into consideration.(Para 16) The intention of the legislature under the Amending Act of 2001 was to rationalize the sentence structure so as to ensure that while drug traffickers who traffic in significant quantities of drugs are punished with deterrent sentence, the addicts and those who commit less serious offences are sentenced to less severe punishment. Under the rationalised sentence structure, the punishment would vary depending upon the quantity of offending material. Thus, it cannot be said that the rate of purity is irrelevant since any preparation which is more than the commercial quantity of 250 gms. and contains 0.2% of heroin or more would be punishable under S. 21 (c) Act, because the intention of the legislature is to levy punishment based on the content of the offending drug in the mixture and not on the weight of the mixture as such. In the mixture of a narc....