Supreme Court Disapproves Rajasthan High Court's Restrictions On Power Of Arrest & Listing Of Bail Applications During Lockdown

The Supreme Court on Wednesday expressed disapproval of the order of the Rajasthan High Court which had restrained the police from arresting accused persons if they are accused only of offences with maximum sentence up to three years imprisonment till July 17, 2021 in view of the pandemic and lockdown situations.

The impugned High Court order passed by a single bench had also directed the Registry to not list applications seeking anticipatory bail in offences where maximum sentence extends upto three years during the summer vacation of the Court.

The Supreme Court was delivering the verdict in the special leave petitions filed by the High Court of Rajasthan itself challenging the above orders of the single bench(High Court of Judicature for Rajasthan versus The State of Rajasthan and Another).

The Supreme Court bench comprising Justices L Nageswara Rao and Aniruddha Bose expressed disapproval of both the directions (restrictions on arrest and listing of bail applications) issued by a single bench of the High Court.

The Supreme Court noted that the direction against the listing of bail applications in the specified cases had the potential of violating the constitutional rights of the individuals. Further, the Court observed that the direction against arrest had the potential of "putting fetters on the power of investigation".

However, since both the orders have already worked out, the Supreme Court refrained from formally setting aside them. Justice Bose, who read out the operative portion of the order in Court today, said that the appeals filed by the High Court of Rajasthan have been allowed with the above observations.

Justice Bose said that the bench had initially considered disposing of the matter as infructous, since the directions have got worked out. However, the bench decided to consider the legality and propriety of issuing such directions going far beyond the issues involved in the case at hand.

Fully copy of the judgment is awaited.

There were two Special Leave Petitions before the Supreme Court - SLP(Crl) No.5618/2020 and SLP(Crl) No.3949/2021. The first one challenged the order passed by a single bench of High Court on March 30 last year directing the Registry to not list applications for bail and sentence suspension as urgent matters during the period of lockdown. The second SLP challenged the order passed by the single bench on May 17 this year, in which the restraint order against police regarding arrests in cases with less than 3 years imprisonment as punishment and the direction to not list anticipatory bail applications in cases with less than 3 years imprisonment as punishment were passed. Incidentally, both the impugned orders were passed by a bench of Justice Pankaj Bhandari.

The Supreme Court had earlier stayed the operation of both the orders. The order passed on March 30, 2020 was stayed by the Supreme Court on April 3, 2020. The order passed on May 17, 2021, was stayed by a vacation bench of the Supreme Court on May 25, 2021.

Case Title : High Court of Judicature for Rajasthan versus The State of Rajasthan and Another, SLP(Crl) No.5618/2020 and SLP(Crl) No.3949/2021.

Citation : LL 2021 SC 523

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