2023 YLR 2654
PLJ 2023 CrC 791
Judgments of the Supreme Court have a retrospective effect because they declared the correct interpretation of an already existing provision of law. Any authoritative judgment is always considered as not laying down the law for the first time but declaring it as it should have been, or it should be understood to have been from its inception. It is settled law that when the Supreme Court interprets or declares the law, that interpretation only clarifies the meaning of the words already used by the legislature or the competent authority drafting the provisions. It stands to reason, therefore, that the same interpretation must be applicable not from the time when the judgment pronouncing such interpretation was rendered but from the time when the law or provision in question was enacted.
Careful scrutiny of the forensic report reflects that details of protocols of tests have not been provided therein in the spirit of Rule 6 of the Rules. It is settled law by now that any report failing to describe in it, the details of the full protocols applied for the test will be inconclusive, defective, unreliable and will not meet the evidentiary presumption attached to a report of the Government Analyst under Section 36(2) of the CNSA, 1997.
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