The Allahabad High Court has granted conditional bail to a man, accused of smuggling 29.952 kg of charas.
A Single Bench of Justice Vivek Kumar Singh passed this order while hearing a Criminal Appeal filed by Mohd Iliyas.
It is submitted by the counsel for the appellant that the appellant is innocent and he has been falsely implicated in the case. It next contended that false recovery of 29.952 kg Charas has been shown from the joint possession of the applicant and two other co-accused persons.
Senior Counsel for the appellant submitted that the appellant has served a substantial portion of the sentence of six years; seven months and nineteen days. The Supreme Court in Special Leave Petition (Criminal) “Saudan Singh Vs State of UP” has proposed that there may be even convicts in custody cases other than life sentence cases and in those cases again the broad parameter of 50 per cent of the actual sentence undergone can be the basis for grant of bail.
The trial court has misread the evidence on record and wrongly convicted the appellant. It is further submitted that there is no likelihood of early disposal of the appeal due to huge pendency of much older appeals before the court and the applicant-appellant undertakes that if released on bail, he will never misuse the liberty and will cooperate in the hearing of the appeal.
Counsel for the NCB as well as AGA have opposed the bail application but he could not point out anything relevant to contradict the aforesaid submissions made by the counsel for the applicant.
“After perusing the record in the light of the submissions made at the Bar, considering the entire facts and circumstances and without expressing any opinion on the merits of the case, keeping in view the observations made by the Supreme Court in Saudan Singh Vs State of UP (supra), I find it a fit case for bail due to reason that more than eight years sentence has been served by accused-appellant during trial as well as during pendency of appeal”, the Court observed.
The Court ordered that,
Let the appellant Mohd Iliyas, who has been convicted and sentenced in Special Case arising out of Crime under Sections 8/20 of NDPS Act, Police Station Bilaspur, District Rampur, be released on bail on his furnishing a personal bond with two reliable sureties each in the like amount to the satisfaction of the Court concerned.
During the pendency of appeal, realization of half of the fine shall remain subject to the condition that the applicant-appellant shall deposit half of the fine before the court concerned within thirty days from the date of his release from the jail.