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New Delhi: On March 19, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Ahsanuddin Amanullah and R. Mahadevan upheld the conviction of two young foreign nationals under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, but invoked Article 142 of the Constitution to reduce their sentence to the period already undergone.

Six days later, on March 25, the same bench allowed a criminal appeal by the Union of India and set aside a Gauhati high court order granting bail to a woman accused of being part of a heroin cartel.

The first order, in Ayoouluwa David Adebakin & Anr. v. State (SLP (Crl) No. 14141/2025), deployed the extraordinary constitutional jurisdiction to temper a sentence with compassion. The second order, in Union of India v. Themboi @ Themboi Singson (Criminal Appeal No. 1616/2026), exercised ordinary appellate jurisdiction to enforce the statutory rigour of Section 37 of the NDPS Act.

The two cases occupied different procedural stages. One was a post-conviction challenge to sentence; the other, a pre-trial bail cancellation. Yet they concern the same statute and the same underlying question of personal liberty. Read together, they offer a compact illustration of the competing demands that NDPS adjudication places on the judiciary.

Students, ganja, and Article 142

The two appellants in Adebakin, aged 22 and 26, were students pursuing academic courses in India. They were convicted for possession of four and three kilograms of dry ganja respectively, under Section 8(c) read with Section 20(b)(ii)(B) of the NDPS Act, and for conspiracy under Section 29(1). The quantities fell between the small quantity threshold of one kilogram and the commercial quantity threshold of 20 kilograms. The trial court sentenced each of them to seven years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 50,000 for each offence, with both sentences to run concurrently. The Madras high court dismissed their appeal on  August 2,  2023.

Before the Supreme Court, senior counsel Anand Grover raised substantive challenges. The samples collected on  November 19, 2019 were sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory only on  December 10, 2019. No explanation was offered for where the samples were stored during this three-week gap, and no........

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