Saurabh Malik
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, October 8
In a move liable to expedite the hearing of appeals filed by the state against acquittal orders and convicts against their conviction and sentence in drug cases, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed the initiation of an exercise to find out the pendency of such matters before it.
A division Bench of the High Court has directed the registry to collate year-wise information on the total number of pending appeals under the provisions of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. The direction came after the Bench of Justice Ajay Tewari and Justice Alka Sarin was told that appellants before it in drug cases had undergone substantial part of the sentence, but their appeals were yet to be heard.
The Bench was hearing a bunch of applications in criminal appeals filed against the Narcotics Control Bureau by Bhupender Singh and other appellant-convicts through counsel Navkiran Singh, Shaveta Sanghi, Aditya Sanghi and other advocates. The state of Punjab was represented by Sandeep Vermani while Shruti Jain appeared for the state of Haryana. Advocate PS Ahluwalia was the amicus curiae or the friend of the court in the matter.
The Bench observed the convicts in the bunch of applications were seeking suspension of sentence on the preliminary ground that they had undergone a substantial part of the sentence, but the appeals had not been heard.
“It has been suggested by the counsel appearing on behalf of the applicant-appellant, the amicus curiae and the state counsel that before considering this issue, it would be appropriate if statistics are summoned regarding total number of pending appeals (year-wise) under the NDPS Act, 1985, in this court. We are in agreement with the suggestion,” the Bench asserted. Before parting with the order, the Bench fixed the case for October last week to enable the registry to place the requisite information before it after collating the same. The High Court, as of now, is facing a pendency of 4,51,581 cases. The National Judicial Data Grid — the monitoring tool to identify, manage and reduce pendency of cases — indicates that 68,390 of the total pending matters are criminal appeals.
Yearly info sought
A division Bench of the High Court has directed the registry to collate year-wise information on the total number of pending appeals under the provisions of the NDPS Act.
HC: Collate data on pending drug appeals
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