Instruct Judicial Officers Over The Manner Of Reflecting Facts Of FIR In Bail Order: P&H High Court To Judicial Academy

The Punjab & Haryana High Court on Thursday directed the Director, Chandigarh Judicial Academy to issue appropriate directions to the judicial officers on the manner in which the facts in the FIR need to be reflected in the Bail order, before an opinion whether bail/anticipatory bail is to be granted or declined is formed.

The Bench of Justice Arvind Kumar Sangwan ordered thus while noting that in an alleged Dacoity case, the Additional Sessions Judge had, without noticing the facts of the FIR, decided that since the petitioner was booked for an offence under Section 395 of the IPC, his custodial interrogation was required.

Significantly, observing that the order passed by the lower court was on the face of it, against the settled norms, the Court remarked:

"It is a well-settled procedure of law that while passing on order or a judgment, a Judge is required to notice the facts of the FIR; the role of the person seeking bail/anticipatory bail; his antecedents and the gravity of offence committed and then form an opinion in the light of the guidelines given by Hon'ble Surpeme Court in number of judgments regarding granting or dismissing the bail/anticipatory bail."

The matter in brief

An FIR was registered at the instance of complainant-Chandan Kumar that he is a pizza delivery boy and on July 14, 2020, he had gone to a house for delivering pizza where 05 boys were present.

Allegedly, on seeing him, they started abusing him by saying that he had come very late and they snatched the pizza from him as well as his motorcycle.

Thereafter, the complainant gave information to the police and when the police reached the spot, four boys had already fled away with the motorcycle, whereas, 5th boy namely Prince was arrested at the spot and during the investigation, he gave a disclosure statement giving the name of the other person as Aakash, who was later on arrested. 

Submissions made before the Court

At the very outset, the Counsel for the petitioner referred to the order passed by the Additional Sessions Judge, Gurugram dated June 1, 2021 to submit that the order was totally non-speaking reflecting non-application of mind and lacking the art of writing an order.

The counsel for the petitioner submitted that one of the co-accused had applied for anticipatory bail before the Court and in September 2020 noticing the allegation in the FIR, he was granted the concession of interim bail, which was later on confirmed on January 2021.

The counsel for the petitioner further submitted that other co-accused, who were arrested, have already been released on regular bail.

The State counsel did not dispute the factual position that the allegations were regarding snatching of a pizza and the motorcycle which were recovered from the co-accused who have already been arrested.

Court's order

Listing the case for further hearing on August 12, 2021, the Court granted the petitioner interim bail, however, he has been asked to join the investigation.

Case title- Sumit Tanwar v. State of West Bengal

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