Supreme Court slams Allahabad HC for 'cyclostyled' orders on bail cancellation pleas

This contentious order was later modified apparently at the behest of Chief Justice BR Gavai.

In the case at hand, Justice Pardiwala passed a strongly-worded judgment and set aside an order of the High Court that refused to cancel the bail of an accused facing trial for a murder, and instead relegated the complainant to seek recourse under the Witness Protection Scheme.

Phireram, the original complainant, sought the cancellation of bail of the accused on the ground that he breached the bail riders by threatening the witnesses of a murder case.

The high court declined to cancel the bail and instead directed the complainant to apply under the Witness Protection Scheme.

“We take notice of the fact that the High Court has passed a very curious order…The High Court says that the remedy with the appellant as an aggrieved person being the original first informant is under the Witness Protection Scheme. In other words, what we have been able to understand from the bare reading of the impugned order is that the High Court wants the appellant to avail the provisions of the scheme. Having said so, the High Court declined to cancel the bail,” the top court noted.

The bench observed the high court should have decided the plea for cancellation of bail on merits by "applying the well-settled principles of law".

The top court referred to a previous high court order granting bail to the accused and said, “The High Court …had itself observed that in the event of violation or breach of any of the conditions, the trial court would be at liberty to cancel the bail of the accused.” The bench added, "When it is an outright case of breach of the conditions of the bail order and when the original first informant is able to prima facie demonstrate in what manner the accused person is abusing the liberty granted to him, then, in such circumstances, the provisions of the Witness Protection Scheme have hardly any role to play." The verdict underlined the "well settled" nature of the law on cancellation of bail keeping in mind the "plethora of decisions" with the governing principle being: "when an accused tampers with evidence, threatens witnesses, or attempts to subvert the trial, the bail can be cancelled".

Coming down heavily on the high court's prevailing practice, the bench said, “Orders are a verbatim copy of each other. We are dismayed to note that the aforesaid practice of passing cyclostyled template orders has been in vogue past more than two years." “The most disturbing feature of all these orders passed is that the Public Prosecutor instead of assisting the learned Judge in the right direction by pointing out the correct position of law, has instead himself urged that the witness or complainant be relegated to avail remedy under the Witness Protection Scheme rather than seeking cancellation of the bail of the accused person, who administered threats and caused intimidation to the witness, in violation of the conditions of his bail order. We deprecate this practice,” it added.

The order, as a result, was set aside and remanded to the high court with a direction to rehear the bail cancellation plea on merits in four weeks, after seeking a report from the investigating officer on two subsequent FIRs lodged with regard to threats.

The bench further directed the registry to circulate a copy of each of the orders to all the high courts.

With inputs from PTI