New Delhi: In a significant verdict, the Supreme Court on Friday, February 13, set aside a high court order granting anticipatory bail to a murder accused who remained a fugitive for more than six years.
The top court directed the accused to surrender before the trial court within four weeks and said he will be free to seek regular bail there.
A bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and Vijay Bishnoi held that allowing an absconder to benefit from the acquittal of co-accused persons sets a “bad precedent” and incentivises the evasion of law.
“It is, thus, a trite position that an absconder is not entitled to the relief of anticipatory bail as a general rule. However, in certain exceptional cases, where on a perusal of the FIR, case diary and other relevant materials on record, the court is of the prima-facie opinion that no case is made out against the absconding accused, then the power of granting anticipatory bail may be exercised in favour of the absconding accused,” Justice Bishnoi, who authored the judgment, said.
Referring to the facts of the case, the verdict termed the high court order “completely erroneous and perverse”.
It said according to the documents on record, no exceptional case was made out for the grant of anticipatory bail to the accused. The bench noted that even the State had supported the appellant’s submission that the high court order granting pre-arrest bail be set aside.
“However, it is not in dispute that the State has not filed any SLP (special leave petition) challenging the impugned order. We fail to understand why the respondent State, for reasons best known to it, has not filed an appeal before this court against the impugned order, when in fact, it has fully supported the appellant/original complainant’s case for setting aside the anticipatory bail granted to the accused, by way of its counter-affidavit,” the bench noted.
It held that the high court had not rightly exercised the discretion to grant anticipatory bail as it was not a fit case in which the discretion could be exercised.
The bench said the accused was a member of a mob and had not only absconded from the investigation but also threatened to kill the injured victim, Shailendra alias Pintu, who was also an eyewitness.
“In light of the above discussion, we set aside the impugned order dated January 19, 2024, and direct the accused to surrender before the court concerned within a period of four weeks from today,” it said.
“The accused cannot be permitted to encash on the acquittal of the co-accused persons…. Especially when the accused had been absconding for about six years and made a mockery of the judicial process,” the apex court said.
The judgment warned that granting pre-arrest bail to fugitives sends a damaging message to law-abiding citizens.
It said such orders suggest that the co-accused, who diligently attended the trial, were “wrong” to do so and instead, the law “incentivises people to evade the process of law with impunity”.
The bench, however, clarified that its observations are limited to the present proceedings and would not be construed as an opinion on the merits of the case.
The matter stems from a 2017 incident in Madhya Pradesh involving a violent clash between two political groups.
According to the prosecution, the accused was part of a mob that attacked the complainant’s party with firearms, sticks and swords.
The violence resulted in the death of one Bablu Chaudhary and left several people, including eyewitness Shailendra alias Pintu, with grievous injuries.
While several co-accused stood trial and were ultimately acquitted in June 2023, the respondent no. 2 (the son of co-accused Chandan Singh) was absconding since the incident took place on June 2, 2017.
Despite multiple rewards announced for his arrest and his previous bail applications being rejected by various courts, he remained untraceable for more than six years.
Following the acquittal of the other co-accused in 2023, the accused filed a third anticipatory bail application.
The High Court of Madhya Pradesh granted him the relief on January 19, 2024, primarily on the ground of “parity”, noting that since the main trial had resulted in acquittals, there was no cogent material against the remaining accused.
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