Law must act decisively against drug traffickers: CJI

Chief Justice of India Surya Kant said those who traffic narcotics, organise supply chain and profit from human vulnerability are perpetrators of serious harm. In his address on Friday at the Goa Bench of Bombay High Court building during the 30-day-long campaign on drug abuse, the CJI said the law must speak firmly, decisively and without hesitation against drug traffickers.

“Our legal framework draws a very clear and deliberate distinction. Those who traffic narcotics, organise supply chains, who profit from human vulnerability are not victims of circumstances. They are perpetrators of serious harm. For those actors, the law must speak firmly, decisively and without hesitation.” Substance abuse cannot be addressed through isolated responses and requires collective efforts that involve families, educators, health professionals, communities and others, the CJI pointed out.

Within this larger framework, the law has a role to play but “it is not the only choice or voice, nor it should it be the first response in every case,” he asserted. The CJI said the criminal justice system is seen as an apparatus of punishment.

“That perception, however, does not fully reflect our constitutional values or the deeper tradition of Indian jurisprudence. Our legal system has long acknowledged that the justice is not served by punishment alone, particularly where human priority, youth and social vulnerability is involved,” the CJI said.

In the Indian judicial system, matters concerning (drug) addiction has evolved as “a reformatory orientation that seeks not only to ensure wrongdoing and censor it strongly but prevent its repetition and restore individuals to the social mainstream”. CJI Kant said society cannot have ambiguity when faced with organised exploitation.

“But the law’s response must be different when it encounters first time user, student or adult struggling with dependency (on narcotics),” he said. “The central question is no longer only one of culpability, it becomes a question of recovery. The punishment cannot be the end, justice must ask whether it is closing a case or preserving a future that might otherwise be lost,” he said.

The CJI said that this is not leniency but realism. “Addiction can only be confronted with the calibrated balance of deterrence, treatment and social reintegration. This is precisely where institutions beyond the court room becomes indispensable,” he said.

Speaking about the campaign against drugs, the CJI said it should stand as a reaffirmation of a simple but enduring principle that justice in India can be firm without being cruel and compassionate without being naïve. “The true measure of our success will not lie in the number of events held or pledges taken but, in the lives, redirected, silence broken and the futures reclaimed,” he added.