Hon'ble Judges/Coram:
Indira Banerjee, Rohinton Fali Nariman and Navin Sinha

JUDGMENT

Rohinton Fali Nariman, J.

1. These Appeals and Special Leave Petitions arise by virtue of a reference order of a Division Bench of this Court reported as Tofan Singh v. State of Tamil Nadu   MANU/SC/1031/2013 : (2013) 16 SCC 31. The facts in that appeal have been set out in that judgment in some detail, and need not be repeated by us. After hearing arguments from both sides, the Court recorded that the Appellant in Criminal Appeal No. 152 of 2013 had challenged his conviction primarily on three grounds, as follows:

24.1. The conviction is based solely on the purported confessional statement recorded Under Section 67 of the NDPS Act which has no evidentiary value inasmuch as:

(a) The statement was given to and recorded by an officer who is to be treated as "police officer" and is thus, hit by Section 25 of the Evidence Act.

(b) No such confessional statement could be recorded Under Section 67 of the NDPS Act. This provision empowers to call for information and not to record such confessional statements. Thus, the statement recorded under this provision is akin to the statement Under Section 161 Code of Criminal Procedure.

(c) In any case, the said statement having been retracted, it could not have been the basis of conviction and could be used only to corroborate other evidence.

2. Under the caption "Evidentiary value of statement Under Section 67 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, Act, 1985 ("NDPS Act")", the Court noted the decisions of Raj Kumar Karwal v. Union of India   MANU/SC/0014/1991 : (1990) 2 SCC 409 and Kanhaiyalal v. Union of India   MANU/SC/7047/2008 : (2008) 4 SCC 668, as also certain other judgments, most notably Abdul Rashid v. State of Bihar   MANU/SC/1005/2001 : (2001) 9 SCC 578 and Noor Aga v. State of Punjab   MANU/SC/2913/2008 : (2008) 16 SCC 417, an........