Article 21 of the Constitution of India proscribes deprivation, of the life and liberty of every Indian citizen, save and except by "procedure established by law". The law, in this country, permits deprivation of the liberty of the citizen, by her, or his, incarceration, during trial, as well as after its conclusion, but for different reasons, and to achieve different purposes. Incarceration, after trial and consequent on the accused being found guilty, is punitive in nature. Punishment, by plain logic, has necessarily to follow a determination of guilt, accompanying conviction, and can never be anterior thereto. Incarceration during trial, therefore, can never be punitive in nature and is never intended to operate as a punishment, as was rightly held in H. B. Chaturvedi vs C.B.I., 171 (2010) DLT 223.
What, then, is incarceration, during trial, intended to achieve?
The question stands answered in various authorities, including Gurbaksh Singh Sibbia vs. State of Punjab, (1980) 2 SCC 565 (by a Constitution Bench) and Gudikanti Narasimhulu vs. Public Prosecutor, High Court of A.P., (1978) 1 SCC 240. Gurbaksh Singh Sibbia (supra) quoted, with approval, the time-tested observations, of the High Court of Calcutta in In re. Nagendra Nath Chakravarti, AIR 1924 Cal 476, to the effect that
"the object of bail is to secure the attendance of the accused at the trial, that the proper test to be applied in the solution of the question whether bail should be granted or refused is whether it is probable that the party will appear to take his trial and that it is indisputable that a bail could not be withheld as a punishment".
Gudikanti Narsimhulu (supra) relied, approvingly, on the following passage, from American Jurisprudence (II) Vol. 8, P806, para 39:
"Where the granting of bail lies within the discretion of the court, the granting or denial is regulated, to a large extent, by the facts and circumstances of each particular case. Since the object of the detention or imprisonment of the accused is to secure his appearance and submission to the jurisdiction and the judgment of the court, the primary inquiry is whether a recognizance or bond would effect that end."
Both these decisions, it may be noted, were relied upon, by a recent decision of the Supreme Court, speaking through Rohinton Fali Nariman, J., in Nikesh Tarachand Shah vs U.O.I., (2018) 11 SCC 1.
The said judgement examined the entire history of bail jurisprudence, starting from Clause 39 of the Magna Carta, the translation of which was quoted, in the said decision,, thus:
"No free man shall be seized or imprisoned or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land."
The following pronouncement, from Gurbaksh Singh Sibbia (supra) was also approvingly cited:
"It was observed that the principle to be deduced from the various sections in the Criminal Procedure Code was that grant of bail is the rule and refusal is the exception. An accused person who enjoys freedom is in a much better position to look after his case and to properly defend himself than if he were in custody. As a presumably innocent person he is therefore entitled to freedom and every opportunity to look after his own case. A presumably innocent person must have his freedom to enable him to establish his innocence."
The Supreme Court has, in another recent decision in Dataram Singh vs. State of U.P., (2018) 3 SCC 22, had occasion to criticize the attitude of courts in unjustifiably denying bail, resulting in unnecessary incarceration and crowding of jails.
A fundamental postulate of criminal jurisprudence is the presumption of innocence, meaning thereby that a person is believed to be innocent until found guilty. However, there are instances in our criminal law where a reverse onus has been placed on an accused with regard to some specific offences but that is another matter and does not detract from the fundamental postulate in respect of other offences. Yet another important facet of our criminal jurisprudence is that the grant of bail is the general rule and putting a person in jail or in a prison or in a correction home (whichever expression one may wish to use) is an exception. Unfortunately, some of these basic principles appear to have been lost sight of with the result that more and more persons are being incarcerated and for longer periods. This does not do any good to our criminal jurisprudence or to our society.
There is no doubt that the grant or denial of bail is entirely the discretion of the judge considering a case but even so, the exercise of judicial discretion has been circumscribed by a large number of decisions rendered by Apex Court and by every High Court in the country. Yet, occasionally there is a necessity to introspect whether denying bail to an accused person is the right thing to do on the facts and in the circumstances of a case.
While so introspecting, among the factors that need to be considered is whether the accused was arrested during investigations when that person perhaps has the best opportunity to tamper with the evidence or influence witnesses. If the investigating officer does not find it necessary to arrest an accused person during investigations, a strong case should be made out for placing that person in judicial custody after a charge-sheet is filed. Similarly, it is important to ascertain whether the accused was participating in the investigations to the satisfaction of the investigating officer and was not absconding or not appearing when required by the investigating officer. Surely, if an accused is not hiding from the investigating officer or is hiding due to some genuine and expressed fear of being victimised, it would be a factor that a judge would need to consider in an appropriate case. It is also necessary for the judge to consider whether the accused is a first-time offender or has been accused of other offences and if so, the nature of such offences and his or her general conduct. The poverty or the deemed indigent status of an accused is also an extremely important factor and even Parliament has taken notice of it by incorporating an Explanation to Section 436 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. An equally soft approach to incarceration has been taken by Parliament by inserting Section 436-A in the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.
To put it shortly, a humane attitude is required to be adopted by a judge, while dealing with an application for remanding a suspect or an accused person to police custody or judicial custody. There are several reasons for this including maintaining the dignity of an accused person, howsoever poor that person might be, the requirements of Article 21 of the Constitution and the fact that there is enormous overcrowding in prisons, leading to social and other problems as noticed by Apex Court in Inhuman Conditions in 1382 Prisons, In re, (2017) 10 SCC 658 : (2018) 1 SCC (Cri) 90.
The historical background of the provision for bail has been elaborately and lucidly explained in a recent decision delivered in Nikesh Tarachand Shah v. Union of India, (2018) 11 SCC 1 : (2017) 13 Scale 609 going back to the days of the Magna Carta. In that decision, reference was made to Gurbaksh Singh Sibbia v. State of Punjab, (1980) 2 SCC 565 in which it is observed that it was held way back in Nagendra Nath Chakravarti, In re, AIR 1924 Cal 476 that bail is not to be withheld as a punishment. Reference was also made to Emperor v. H.L. Hutchinson, AIR 1931 All 356 wherein it was observed that grant of bail is the rule and refusal is the exception. The provision for bail is therefore age-old and the liberal interpretation to the provision for bail is almost a century old, going back to colonial days.
However, we should not be understood to mean that bail should be granted in every case. The grant or refusal of bail is entirely within the discretion of the judge hearing the matter and though that discretion is unfettered, it must be exercised judiciously and in a humane manner and compassionately. Also, conditions for the grant of bail ought not to be so strict as to be incapable of compliance, thereby making the grant of bail illusory.
Dataram Singh (supra) was relied upon, by a three-Judge Bench of the Supreme Court, in a still more recent decision in X vs State of Telangana, 2018 SCC Online SC 549.
In Neeru Yadav vs State of U.P., (2016) 15 SCC 422, applying the same principle, Apex Court held that:
It is a well-settled principle of law that while dealing with an application for grant of bail, it is the duty of the Court to take into consideration certain factors and they basically are:
(i) the nature of accusation and the severity of punishment in cases of conviction and the nature of supporting evidence,
(ii) reasonable apprehension of tampering with the witnesses for apprehension of threat to the complainant, and
(iii) prima facie satisfaction of the Court in support of the charge.
The decision in State of Bihar vs Rajballav Prasad, (2017) 2 SCC 178, emphasises that while the liberty of the subject is an important consideration, the public interest in the proper administration of criminal justice is equally important.
Undoubtedly the courts have to adopt a liberal approach while considering bail applications of accused persons. However, in a given case, if it is found that there is a possibility of interdicting fair trial by the accused if released on bail, this public interest of fair trial would outweigh the personal interest of the accused while undertaking the task of balancing the liberty of the accused on the one hand and interest of the society to have a fair trial on the other hand. When the witnesses are not able to depose correctly in the court of law, it results in low rate of conviction and many times even hardened criminals escape the conviction. It shakes public confidence in the criminal justice delivery system. It is this need for larger public interest to ensure that criminal justice delivery system works efficiently, smoothly and in a fair manner that has to be given prime importance in such situations.
The Supreme Court had, in an earlier decision in Prasanta Kumar Sarkar vs Ashis Chatterjee, (2010) 14 SCC 496, ruled that, among other circumstances, the following factors were required to be borne in mind while considering an application for bail:
1. Whether there is any prima facie or reasonable ground to believe that the accused had committed the offence;
2. Nature and gravity of the accusation;
3. Severity of the punishment in the event of conviction;
4. Danger of the accused absconding or fleeing, if released on bail;
5. Character, behaviour, means, position and standing of the accused;
6. Likelihood of the offence being repeated;
7. Reasonable apprehension of the witnesses being influenced; and
8. Danger, of course, of justice being thwarted by grant of bail."
The judgment further held that
"if the High Court does not advert to these relevant considerations and mechanically grants bail, the said order would suffer from the vice of non application of mind rendering it to be illegal".
In bail applications, generally, it has been laid down from the earliest times that the object of bail is to secure the appearance of the accused person at his trial by reasonable amount of bail. The object of bail is neither punitive nor preventative. Deprivation of liberty must be considered a punishment, unless it is required to ensure that an accused person will stand his trial when called upon. The courts owe more than verbal respect to the principle that punishment begins after conviction, and that every man is deemed to be innocent until duly tried and duly found guilty.
From the earliest times, it was appreciated that detention in custody pending completion of trial could be a cause of great hardship. From time to time, necessity demands that some unconvicted persons should be held in custody pending trial to secure their attendance at the trial but in such cases, "necessity" is the operative test. In this country, it would be quite contrary to the concept of personal liberty enshrined in the Constitution that any person should be punished in respect of any matter, upon which, he has not been convicted or that in any circumstances, he should be deprived of his liberty upon only the belief that he will tamper with the witnesses if left at liberty, save in the most extraordinary circumstances.
Apart from the question of prevention being the object of refusal of bail, one must not lose sight of the fact that any imprisonment before conviction has a substantial punitive content and it would be improper for any court to refuse bail as a mark of disapproval of former conduct whether the accused has been convicted for it or not or to refuse bail to an unconvicted person for the purpose of giving him a taste of imprisonment as a lesson.
Seriousness of the charge is, no doubt, one of the relevant considerations while considering bail applications but that is not the only test or the factor: the other factor that also requires to be taken note of is the punishment that could be imposed after trial and conviction. Otherwise, if the former is the only test, we would not be balancing the constitutional rights but rather "recalibrating the scales of justice".
Apex Court, time and again, has stated that bail is the rule and committal to jail an exception. It has also observed that refusal of bail is a restriction on the personal liberty of the individual guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution.
More recently, in Siddharam Satlingappa Mhetre v. State of Maharashtra [(2011) 1 SCC 694 : (2011) 1 SCC (Cri) 514, Supreme Court observed that:
"Just as liberty is precious to an individual, so is the society's interest in maintenance of peace, law and order. Both are equally important.
Personal liberty is a very precious fundamental right and it should be curtailed only when it becomes imperative according to the peculiar facts and circumstances of the case."
The grant or refusal to grant bail lies within the discretion of the court. The grant or denial is regulated, to a large extent, by the facts and circumstances of each particular case. But at the same time, right to bail is not to be denied merely because of the sentiments of the community against the accused. The primary purposes of bail in a criminal case are to relieve the accused of imprisonment, to relieve the State of the burden of keeping him, pending the trial, and at the same time, to keep the accused constructively in the custody of the court, whether before or after conviction, to assure that he will submit to the jurisdiction of the court and be in attendance thereon whenever his presence is required.
When the undertrial prisoners are detained in jail custody to an indefinite period, Article 21 of the Constitution is violated. Every person, detained or arrested, is entitled to speedy trial.
Resultant Legal Position
Authorities on bail, and the jurisprudence relating thereto, are in overabundance, and it is hardly necessary to multiply references thereto. The principles governing exercise of judicial discretion in such cases, appear, however, to be well-settled. The following principles may immediately be discerned, from the aforementioned authorities:
1. Incarceration, during trial, is not punitive, but to secure the presence of the accused. The approach of the court, in examining applications for bail, which seek release of the accused during trial, has, therefore, necessarily to centre around the issue of whether continued incarceration of the accused is necessary and imperative, towards securing the end of obtaining his presence when required. Incarceration during trial, therefore, neither chastises nor cures.
2. While examining the issue, courts are not to presume that the accused would flee justice, were he to be released, and search for evidence indicating to the contrary. Logistically, every accused, who is released during trial, has the potentiality of fleeing. Were this potentiality to be allowed to influence the mind of the court, no accused would be entitled to bail.
3. While examining applications for bail, the court has to be duly sensitized to the mandate of Article 21 of the Constitution of India, which guarantees freedom to every citizen of India save and except by procedure prescribed by law. Curtailment of personal liberty during trial, has, therefore, to be limited to those cases in which it is absolutely essential, and in which, in the absence of such curtailment, the process of trial is likely to be hampered by the accused, whether by vanishing or by unduly influencing the trial process, by intimidating the witnesses, or otherwise. If no such apprehension can legitimately be expressed, there can be no reasonable ground to keep the accused incarcerated, as incarceration would then assume a punitive avatar.
4. Given this legal position, the nature of the offence committed necessarily has a limited role to play, while examining the merits of an application for bail. This is for a simple reason that the application being examined by the court is not for suspension of sentence, but for release during trial. If the court were to allow itself to be unduly influenced by the nature of the charges against the accused, and the seriousness of the crime alleged to have been committed by him, it would result in obliterating the distinction between grant of bail and suspension of sentence. Inasmuch as the applicant, in a bail application, has yet to be found guilty of the offence with which he is charged, the significance of the nature of the offence stand substantially reduced, while examining the application for bail. Courts have to be alive to the legal position - underscored in the very first paragraph of Dataram Singh (supra) - that every accused is presumed to be innocent until proved guilty.
5. Where, however, the material against the accused is so insubstantial that the court feels that his conviction, in the ultimate eventuate, appears remote, the court can legitimately arrive at a conclusion that, as the accused is highly unlikely to ultimately suffer conviction, his incarceration during trial, would be unjustified.
6. Having said that, the decisions cited hereinabove reveal that the Supreme Court has, in certain cases, treated the seriousness of the offence alleged against the accused seeking bail, to be a relevant consideration while examining the merit of his application. While it may be true that, in extremely gross cases, the advisability of allowing the accused to roam at large, during the course of his trial, may be questionable, the court has, nevertheless, to be alive to the fact that, at that stage, the charge against the accused is still in the realm of an accusation, and no more. It would be entirely impermissible for the court, at the stage of deciding the bail application of the accused, to subject him to a premature trial, far less to return any finding, even tentative, regarding the justifiability of the charge against him.
7. The Court cannot, however, while adjudicating a bail application, adopt an entirely accused-centric approach, unmindful of the prevailing public and societal interests hanging in the balance. The right of the accused to liberty, prior to his being found guilty of the charge against him has to be weighed against the public interest involved, in ensuring that the trial proceeds fairly and unhindered. The propensity and potentiality of the accused, were he to be enlarged on bail during trial, to unduly affect the trial process has, therefore, to be necessarily factored in, while deciding the application of the accused for bail. This, in turn, would involve examination of various aspects, such as the antecedents of the accused, any previous incidents (which would involve other criminal cases in which the accused might have been involved) which could indicate that the accused might, if let loose, tamper with the evidence, and the roots of the accused in society. In evaluating this aspect of the matter, the court has necessarily to adopt a holistic approach, and it would be impossible to formulate any guidelines in this regard.
While an exhaustive study of the authorities on the point may disclose some degree of oscillation in the precedential pendulum, the unalterable median is, and always is, that bail is the rule, and jail is the exception; the corollary would be that, if one is to abandon the rule, and embrace the exception, there must necessarily be overwhelming reason, and justification, to do so.
While an exhaustive study of the authorities on the point may disclose some degree of oscillation in the precedential pendulum, the unalterable median is, and always is, that bail is the rule, and jail is the exception; the corollary would be that, if one is to abandon the rule, and embrace the exception, there must necessarily be overwhelming reason, and justification, to do so.
See Also : Ashok Sagar v. State [Delhi High Court, 20-06-2018]