Courts must stick to strict conditions if bail is not for violation of fundamental rights: SC judgment

The SC order was based on an appeal filed by a widow of a man who was killed in an alleged gang attack and the Bombay High Court gave the accused bail on the ground that evidence of their involvement in the crime seemed insufficient. File
| Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma

The Supreme Court has made it clear that constitutional courts cannot relax or overlook stringent conditions in special statutes like the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) or Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in order to grant bail on grounds other than the violation of the fundamental rights of accused persons.

The judgment was based on an appeal filed by a widow of a man who was killed in an alleged gang attack in Pune in 2020. The Bombay High Court gave the accused, charged under MCOCA, bail on the ground that the evidence of their involvement in the crime seemed insufficient.

A Bench of Justices C.T. Ravikumar, who retired on January 3, and Sanjay Karol held that when there was an embargo put in by a specific provision under a special enactment (MCOCA in this case) for the grant of bail, the court’s power to grant bail must be subject to satisfaction of the conditions mentioned in the provision.

Section 21(4) of the MCOCA mandates that a court need not grant bail unless it has reasonable basis to believe that the accused is guilty of the offence and the accused is unlikely to commit another offense while out on bail.

Both conditions for bail in MCOCA are similar to that of Section 45(1) of the PMLA.

During arguments, counsel for the accused in the present case had referred to recent judgments of the Supreme Court in PMLA cases, all of which had held that such rigorous provisions would not come in the way of constitutional courts granting bail to accused persons on the ground of violation of their fundamental rights.

However, Justice Ravikumar, who authored the January 2 judgment, pointed out that the Bombay High Court had granted bail to the accused not because their fundamental rights were violated, but instead on the grounds that the evidence against them was not sufficient.

The top court explained that questions of sufficiency of evidence or correctness of the prosecution case arose later at the time of trial, and not while considering a bail application, especially when the alleged crime was an offence under a special law like the MCOCA.

Justice Ravikumar said the High Court had transgressed into an “impermissible area”.

The top court, while referring the bail applications to the High Court for fresh adjudication, said the latter must confine its consideration to the “question of satisfaction” of bail conditions under Section 21(4) of MCOCA.