Poverty or indigent status of the applicant is an important factor to be considered while enlarging the accused on Bail: Himachal Pradesh HC

Harshit Sharma | Amity Law School, Madhya Pradesh | 28th December 2019

Prakash Chand V/s. State of Himachal Pradesh Cr. M.P. (M) No. 2168/2019

FACTS OF THE CASE

1. It is sequel to the already applied bail application in which the accused was enlarged on interim bail vide order dated 26.11.2019 in connection with FIR No. 90/2019 dated 22.10.2019 u/s. 379 r/w. 34 IPC, 1860.
2. The State in the present case stated that the applicant accused was readily available for all the purpose of investigation after the vide order dated 26.11.2019 and is now not required for the purpose of any interrogation matter.
3. Further, the State has no objection to enlarge the applicant on bail, subject to the condition that he shall make his person available as and when required by the investigating authorities.
4. Thus, the present application was filed for seeking the enlargement of the applicant on bail u/s. 439 of Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.

ISSUES RAISED

1. What is the object behind incorporating the provisions of Bail in the Criminal Justice System?
2. What are the essential or important factors which shall be considered for the purpose of allowing the bail application and grating of bail?

RULING OF THE COURT/ THE COURT HELD THAT

The Hon’ble High Court posed, opined and reiterated the following observations pertaining to object of bail provisions and its essential criterions for deciding the enlargement on bail:

1. “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 436A in the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.“
2. “…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 this Court in In Re-Inhuman Conditions in 1382 Prisons.”
3. Relying on the submission of the State, the court enlarged the accused on bail while observing, “Needless to say object of the bail is to secure the attendance of the accused in the trial and 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. Otherwise, bail is not to be withheld as a punishment. Otherwise also, normal rule is of bail and not jail. Court has to keep in mind nature of accusations, nature of evidence in support thereof, severity of the punishment which conviction will entail, character of the accused, circumstances which are peculiar to the accused involved in that crime.“

The observations are based on relying upon various judicial precedents of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India, ranging from Sanjay Chandra v. CBI, Prasanta Kumar Sarkar v. Ashis Chatterjee & Anr. to Dataram Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh.