Search and Seizure Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The mandatory requirement is the documentation of the entire search and seizure process via audio-video electronic recording.

Section 105 of the BNSS, a new provision, requires the search of a place or the taking of possession of property, including the preparation of the list of seized things and its signing by witnesses, to be recorded through audio-video electronic means, preferably a mobile phone. The recording must be forwarded without delay to the Magistrate. It is meant to make searches transparent and the evidence harder to dispute.

No Magistrate need be present. The independent witness rule (Section 103 of the BNSS) asks for two respectable local inhabitants, not five. And a confession from the occupant has nothing to do with a valid search.

Answer: A

Only Conclusion I follows. The Code of Criminal Procedure does describe the seizure or attachment of property, as Statement I itself records, so Conclusion I follows from it.

Conclusion II says the management of properties seized or forfeited is not described in any section of the Code. Statement II says the opposite, that a section of the Code talks about the management of properties seized or forfeited, so Conclusion II contradicts the statement and does not follow. So the answer is the option saying only Conclusion I follows.

Answer: D

The search may be made by all of the above officers.

Section 43 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 lets any officer of any of the departments mentioned in Section 42 seize narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances in any public place or in transit, and detain and search any person or conveyance there. A private vehicle moving on a highway is in a public place, so Section 43 rather than the warrant-and-authorisation procedure for buildings under Section 42 applies.

The police is one of the departments named in Section 42, and the officers there must be superior in rank to a constable. A head constable of the local police station, a sub-inspector posted elsewhere and the Deputy Superintendent or officer-in-charge of the area are all such officers, which is why the key accepts every option together.

Answer: D

The correct answer is None of the above.

Section 50 of the NDPS Act gives a person about to be searched the right to be taken before a Gazetted Officer or a Magistrate, and requires him to be told of it. The Supreme Court held in State of Himachal Pradesh v. Pawan Kumar (2005) that Section 50 applies only to a search of the person's body, not to a bag, briefcase or other article he is carrying.

A suspect carrying narcotic drugs in a bag in his hand is therefore not entitled to that option for the search of the bag, and the Act prescribes no right to be searched before local witnesses or the officer-in-charge. So none of the listed options states a requirement.

Answer: C

The vehicle is not liable to confiscation if the owner proves that it was used in commission of the offence without his knowledge or connivance.

Section 60(3) of the NDPS Act makes any animal or conveyance used in carrying a drug liable to confiscation, unless the owner proves that it was so used without the knowledge or connivance of the owner, his agent and the person in charge, and that each of them took all reasonable precautions against such use.

The acquittal of the person using the vehicle does not by itself decide the owner's claim, and the burden lies on the owner to prove his innocence, not on the prosecution to lead evidence of ownership.