AFZAAL AHMED vs THE STATE

ORDER

' KHALIL-UR-REHMAN RAMDAY, J.---As per F.I.R. No,250 dated 13-9-2001 of Police Station Sadar, Wazirabad, District Gujranwala, a police party comprising the complainant Inspector, two A.S.-Is.

And at least, four police constables apprehended the petitioner with 600 grams of Heroin.

2. After his arrest, the petitioner approached the Court of Session for his release on bail but his said plea was dismissed by a learned Additional Sessions Judge at Wazirabad. This led him to the filing of a bail application before the High Court which also met the same fate vide order dated 8-1-2002 passed in Criminal Miscellaneous No,7112-B of 2001. Hence this petition before this Court for the same purpose.

3. Learned counsel for the petitioner canvassed bail on the ground that despite availability of a large number of witnesses from the public, no such person was associated with the recovery proceedings; that the petitioner was a previous non-convict; that the offence alleged against the petitioner was not hit by the prohibition contained in section 497(1) of the Cr.P.C. And finally that only one gram of Heroin had been taken from the above mentioned alleged quantity of Heroin for the purposes of analysis.

4. It has been repeatedly held by this Court that members of the public were reluctant to offer themselves as witnesses in criminal cases and that in the circumstances no adverse inference could be drawn against the prosecution for not associating such-like persons as witnesses.

Needless to add that the members of the police force were competent-witnesses in the eyes of law and could be credited with veracity unless it could be demonstrated that they were false witnesses and had maliciously accused an innocent person of the commission of an offence for ulterior motives. No such reason was shown to us which could persuade us to hold, at least for the purposes of the present petition, that the complainant Inspector and other members of the Police party had any ulterior purpose in involving the petitioner in the crime in question.

5. The mere fact that an offence did not fall within the prohibitory clause of section 497(1) of the Cr.P.C. Did not mean that such an offence had become a bailable offence. The discretion still remained with the competent C Court to consider whether a person accused of such an offence did or did not deserve the grant of bail in accordance with the established norms governing the exercise of such a power. Needless to mention here that a person accused of spreading a deadly poison i.e the narcotics, in any society, is not the kind of person who qualifies for the grant of any discretionary relief unless, such a person could demonstrate that he was entitled to the grant of bail on account of the reasons mentioned in section 497(2) of the Cr.P.C. No such grounds were shown to exist in the present case which could persuade us to allow bail to the petitioner.

6. Taking a sample consisting of one gram from the quantity of narcotics allegedly recovered cannot be said to be fatal to the prosecution unless it could be established, through evidence, that such a quantity of narcotics had not been taken from the recovered quantity or that such quantity was not sufficient for a proper analysis of the same. No facts or circumstances are available, at least for the present, to establish any such situation.

7. The mere non-conviction of an accused person in the past for any crime is no ground, by itself, to release an accused person on bail.

8. In view of what has been noticed above, we find no merit in this petition which is accordingly dismissed. .