SC: Drug Users Are Victims, Target Supply | CLAT Legal GK

CURRENT AFFAIRS | 14 OCTOBER 2026

The Supreme Court has quashed a woman’s prosecution under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS Act), holding that a case resting only on confessions — her own and those of her co-accused — with no recovery of contraband from her, served “no useful purpose”. Going further, the Court described a person at the end of the narcotics chain as “in one way, … a victim being last in the chain of supply”, and said the focus of enforcement must be on breaking the supply chain, not on merely punishing the user.

The order in Sanjana Bhaskaran v State of Telangana & Anr. (Criminal Appeal arising out of SLP (Crl) No. 3435 of 2026; 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 1044) was passed by a Bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran and is dated Friday, 9 October 2026. The signed order was uploaded on 12 October and reported by LiveLaw on Tuesday, 13 October 2026. The appeal was brought against an order of the High Court for the State of Telangana dated 29 December 2025.

The facts

According to the order, the police received information that two persons would come to sell marijuana near a college. A police team, with two government employees deputed as independent (panch) witnesses, reached the spot in the afternoon. Two men arrived on a scooter; the appellant is said to have walked out of the college, approached them, received a cover and put it in her bag. The police then apprehended all three.

The two alleged sellers were found with a much larger quantity of marijuana in their scooter and disclosed the name of their supplier, who was also arrayed as an accused. The appellant was the fourth accused. A medical test showed she had used marijuana. The prosecution’s version was that she “voluntarily” produced the cover from her bag.

Crucially, as the Court recorded, “even according to the statements of the officers of the police team, there was no recovery made from her or from the bag which she carried.” The case against her was built on the confession of the co-accused — who had a commercial quantity with them — and on her own alleged confession.

What the Supreme Court held

The Bench made four points that together form the ratio of the order:

• Search safeguard: when the police saw her putting the cover in her bag, they “should have informed her about her right to be examined before a Magistrate” and searched only if she consented. The story that she produced the cover voluntarily, the Court said, “raises a suspicion” even about whether she knew there was contraband in it.
• Confessions: “Trite is the principle that no confession can be relied on.” With no recovery from her, the prosecution had nothing independent to stand on.
• No conscious possession: the Court found “no complicity” on her part “with respect to the allegations raised of conscious possession of narcotics”, and quashed her arraignment in the Sessions Case pending before the Special Sessions Judge (Fast Track Court).
• The user as victim: “Prosecuting such victims can have a spiralling effect and incarceration pending trial, can lead to more disastrous consequences of the victim joining the supply chain, by reason only of associations developed in prisons.” Hence: “Curbing availability and breaking the supply chain shall be the focus and not merely punishing the user, who is actually the victim.”

The State had argued that she was caught at the scene and had produced the contraband herself, and that, under a government notification, it would not press prosecution if she agreed to undergo de-addiction. The Court declined that route too: it was “not persuaded to subject the appellant to a de-addiction process”, since it found no complicity at all. It also made clear that it had not examined the case of the other accused, whose trial continues. The appeal was allowed.

Why the order matters

1. Evidence before labels. The NDPS Act contains reverse-burden presumptions — Section 35 presumes a culpable mental state and Section 54 presumes an offence from unexplained possession. But a presumption needs a foundation: possession must first be shown. Where nothing is recovered from the accused and the only material is confession, the foundation is missing, and the presumptions never begin to operate. That is the logical core of this order.

2. Procedure is substance. The Court tied the defect in the search — failing to tell her of her right to be examined before a Magistrate — to the credibility of the “voluntary production” story. In NDPS cases, where punishments are severe, procedural safeguards are the main check against wrongful prosecution.

3. A public-health lens on users. The order echoes the statute’s own design: Sections 39 and 64A already treat addicts as persons to be treated rather than jailed. The Bench’s worry is practical — pre-trial custody can push a user into the trade through prison associations. Its stated priority, supply-side enforcement, mirrors the distinction the Act draws between consumers and traffickers.

4. Limits of the ruling. This is a short order on its own facts. It does not decriminalise consumption: Section 27 remains on the statute book, and the Court expressly left the case of the other accused untouched. Its value lies in the reasoning on confessions, recovery and the treatment of users.