``Despite the stringent provisions of the NDPS Act, 1985 as amended in 1988, drug business is booming; addicts are rapidly rising; crime with its role to narcotics is galloping and drug trafficking network is ever growing,'' observed a five-judge constitution bench.

The judgement written by Chief Justice A S Anand for the bench which heard a case requiring interpretation of Section 50 of the Act dealing with admissibility of evidence collected by an investigating agency after searching a person.

Section 50 provides that an officer of the investigating agency before searching a person, if the latter requires, should take him before a gazetted officer or a magistrate and could detain him till he was produced before such persons. The section also provides that if the authorities, before whom thesuspect is to be searched, see no reasonable ground for search, the suspect could be immediately discharged.