Karnataka High Court: The Bench of Mohammad Nawaz, J. declared that imposing of cash security would virtually amount to a denial of bail.
A petition was filed to set aside an order of a bail condition which was to furnish Rs 1,00,000 as cash security. The petitioners agreed to other conditions but had requested the Court to relax the above condition to which the respondents contended that it was justified owing to the nature of the allegations.
The Court relied on the judgments in Keshab Narayan Banerjee v. State of Bihar, AIR 1985 SC 1666, Moti Ram v. State of M.P., (1978) 4 SCC 47 and a few others wherein it was declared that in order to furnish a heavy cash security amounted to discrimination imposing of which shall amount to ‘no bail’ for the poor strata of the society. Also, any condition in the bail format sure does give unfettering power to the Court to impose any conditions on the applicant but exercising the same should not give an illusionary benefit to the petitioner. Accordingly, the petition was allowed by setting aside the said condition.[Rajshekhar v. State of Karnataka, 2018 SCC OnLine Kar 2936, order dated 21-12-2018]