Supreme Court: The present appeal was filed by the appellant-complainant against the order dated 12-3-2024, passed by the Patna High Court, whereby Respondents 2 and 3-accused persons were granted anticipatory bail, who had allegedly got the appellant’s wife murdered with the aid of contract killers. The Division Bench of Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta, JJ., after noting the appellant’s assertion that the respondents used to run a racket of granting loans at higher interest rates and later extorted the said money, opined that the High Court did not appreciate the gravity of accusations and granted them anticipatory bail in such a heinous offence. Thus, the order dated 12-3-2024 passed by the High Court, was set aside.
Further, the Court observed that for entertaining anticipatory bail applications, the concurrent jurisdiction was provided both to the High Court and the Sessions Court, but the High Court should always encourage exhausting an alternative/concurrent remedy before directly interfering itself.
Background
The appellant submitted a complaint on 16-12-2023, that his wife, who was employed as a health worker at Primary Health Center, Pandark, was shot dead on the same day around 3:30pm. It was stated that his wife was killed by the respondents, who had been continuously threatening and harassing her to extort money and due to which, she had already paid them lakhs of rupees. But when she could not meet the demands, she was eliminated by employing contract killers.
The police registered the FIR against five accused persons, including the respondents. Upon investigation, the police examined CCTV footage from the camera installed in a shop near the place of occurrence, wherein, the appellant’s wife was seen walking with a middle-aged man around 3:22pm, when two persons wearing helmets, came on a bike, shot her, and fled away. Thereafter, the police arrested a person, who gave a confessional statement that family members of the respondents hired someone for Rs 2,40,000 for the murder of the appellant’s wife. During investigation, it was found that the modus operandi of the respondents was to lend money at exorbitant interest rates of about 35% per month and to recover the said amount, for which they would coerce the borrowers to take loans from other moneylenders and forcibly take possession of the borrowed money.
The respondents apprehended their arrest and thus filed an application before the High Court, which was allowed by order dated 12-3-2024. The appellant, being aggrieved by the same, filed an appeal before the Court.
Analysis, Law, and Decision
The Court opined that the High Court did not give any cogent reason for granting anticipatory bail to the respondents and it appeared that the High Court was influenced by the contentions of the respondents. Firstly, that the respondents were women with clean antecedents; secondly, that it was highly improbable that the appellant’s wife, working as health worker would give lakhs of rupees in extortion because in fact, she had borrowed some amount from one of the accused persons for purchasing land and was not returning it back. Thirdly, that the complainant saw an opportunity to falsely implicate the entire family of the respondents.
The Court stated that the High Court did not fairly appreciate the gravity of the accusations levelled against the respondents. The appellant had asserted that the respondents were running a racket of granting loans at higher interest rates and later extorting the loaned money, but still the High Court granted anticipatory bail to the respondents in such a heinous offence.
The Court opined that a balance had to be struck to protect individual liberty of the accused and to secure an environment that was free from any fear in the hearts of victims of the alleged perpetrators. Although grant of bail was a discretionary exercise, the courts must be cautious to judiciously exercise the discretion. The Court thus stated that in the present case, the discretion exercised by the High Court was totally uncalled for, especially at the anticipatory bail stage.
The Court stated that the following factors should have been considered by the High Court before interfering at this stage, firstly, the murder of appellant’s wife was committed in broad daylight; secondly, it was committed with the aid of hired assassins on contract; and thirdly, the parties had a history of tensed relations that established a prima facie case against the respondents. The Court thus opined that the grant of anticipatory bail to the respondents was unwarranted and without any valid reason, resulting in miscarriage of justice.
The Court observed that the scheme of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 (now Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023) provided concurrent jurisdiction to the High Court and Sessions Court for entertaining applications for anticipatory bail, the High Court should always encourage exhausting an alternative/concurrent remedy before directly interfering itself. The said approach would balance the interests of all the stakeholders, as it would give the aggrieved party a first round of challenge before the High Court and it would provide the High Court, an opportunity to assess the judicial perspective applied by the Sessions Court, in concurrent jurisdiction, instead of independently applying its mind from the first go.
The Court stated that the High Court in the present case failed to record any reason for directly granting anticipatory bail without impleading the appellant-complainant as a party.
After considering the facts and circumstances of the case, serious nature of the allegations, and the gravity of the offences alleged, the Court held that the High Court was not justified in passing the impugned order granting anticipatory bail to the respondents. Thus, the appeal was allowed and the order dated 12-3-2024, passed by the High Court, was set aside. The respondents were directed to surrender within four weeks from the date of the present order and apply for regular bail.
[Jagdeo Prasad v. State of Bihar, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 2108, decided on 17-9-2025]
Advocates who appeared in this case:
For the Appellant: Rohit Kumar Singh, AOR; Shivam Sharma, Akash Kumar, Amit Kumar, Harsh Tomar, Saurabh Agrawal, Aditya Sharma, Advocates
For the Respondents: Azmat Hayat Amanullah, Shashank Manish, AOR; Ekta Kundu, Tejasvi Kumar Sharma, Nidhi Sahay, Himanshu Raj, Pragati Singh, Ritansh Kumar Nand, Shubham Ranjan, Advocates
Buy Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 HERE
Recently the Kerala High Court (Justice Bechu Kurian Thomas relying on ptecedents of Supreme Court ruled that choice is that of Accused when it is concurrent jurisdiction and the present decision of the Apex Court did not refer to the earlier Judgments of Supreme Court and it is per in curium