DATE OF THE CASE– 11^th July,2022

APPELLANT- Satender Kumar Antil

RESPONDENTS– Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) & Anr.

BENCH/JUDGES– Hon’ble Mr Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Hon’ble Mr Justice M.M. Sundresh

LEGAL PROVISIONS– S.41, S.41 A and S. 60A of The Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC)

CIVIL APPEAL NUMBER– 5191

FACTS

• The Supreme Court since 2021 has given a trilogy of judgements on Satender Kumar Antil v CBI case, wherein it has laid down specific guidelines for the police for making an arrest under S.41, S.41A and S. 60A.
• Satender Kumar Antil, the petitioner, was accused of seeking bribes while working as an Assistant Provident Fund Commissioner at the Employees Provident Fund Organisation’s regional headquarters in Noida.
• In the FIR lodged by the CBI, the petitioner (Satender Kumar Antil) was identified as an accused under Section 120-B of the Penal Code (penalty of criminal conspiracy) and Section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption Act (offence pertaining to public servant being bribed). After the investigation is completed and the chargesheet is filed with the court, the accused was not arrested.
• Summons were issued by the court for the presence of the accused. The accused failed to present himself before the court and filed for an anticipatory bail application.
• The court rejected the bail application and a non-bailable warrant was issued.
• The accused filed a special leave petition with the Supreme Court where the Supreme Court laid down a set of guidelines bifurcated into three sets of decisions that famously came to be known as the Antil Trilogy.

ISSUE RAISED

• The constitutionality of the procedure used for granting bail.
• Unnecessary arrest by the police during an investigation or before or after the filing of the chargesheet.
• Tussle between bail and Article 21
• Bail is a rule Jail is an exception

CONTENTION ON BEHALF OF THE PETITIONERS

• The petitioner Satender Kumar Antil, had applied for anticipatory bail post-filing of chargesheet against him. His application was rejected due to his absence in the court during the proceedings and non-bailable warrants were issued against him.
• On being questioned for being absent from the proceedings and on the filing of anticipatory bail, the accused filed an application before the Supreme Court in which the counsel pointed out certain inconsistencies with regard to clarification of categorisation of offences into 4 groups: A, B, C and D in case Nikesh Tarach and Shah V Union of India, 2018.
• The council on the petitioner’s behalf presented before the court a list of high courts regarding non-compliance with bail norms set by the Supreme Court.
• Furthermore the petitioner also brought before the court the issue of a large number of undertrial prisoners who are unable to comply with bail.
• The Petitioner pointed out the Supreme Court’s judgement in Mahdoom Bava V CBI, regarding Supreme Courts dealing with cases concerning anticipatory bail wherein a person has cooperated during investigation.

CONTENTION ON BEHALF OF THE RESPONDENTS

• Mr S.V. Raju, the Additional Solicitor General as council from the Respondents also agreed with the co-council from the petitioner’s side, that offences have to be categorised and guidelines for granting bail need to be more lucid aligning with the statutory provisions.
• Furthermore the respondent’s council requested the Supreme Court to categorise a separate set of offences to be called as “Economic Offences”.

RATIONALE

According to Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, every citizen of this country has the right to life, and arresting an accused even when they are cooperating with the procedure or keeping them in judicial custody without following the protocol stated by the Supreme Court in cases such as Mahdoom Bava v CBI is a violation of that right. The Honourable Court further stated that it is the role of the public prosecutor, as a responsible official of the court, to present the right legal position before the court.

In this decision, the Supreme Court found it difficult to support the common practice of imprisoning the accused even while they cooperated and were not imprisoned during the inquiry. These rules were established by the court in a trilogy of judgements-

In the first judgement the court, categorized offences into four categories and laid down guidelines to be followed in conditions like-

1. The person should not have been arrested during the investigation
2. The person should have cooperated throughout the investigation

The categorisation of offences is as follows-

Category A- Includes the offences whose punishment is imprisonment of 7 years or less and do not fall in categories B and D.

Category B- Includes offences that are punishable with death, imprisonment for life or imprisonment exceeding the time duration of 7 years.

Category C- Includes offences which are punishable under special acts like PMLA, UAPA, Companies Act, NDPS Act etc.

Category D- Includes Economic Offences that are not covered by special act.

In the second ruling, the court gave various clarifications to the parameters established in the first ruling, where the court noted its goal behind the initial order was to streamline the bail procedure. The court further stated that the prosecution is not misinterpreting the first batch of decisions by simply categorising some offences under Category D, which may or may not be cognizable offences. The court explained its ruling in Siddharth v State of UP (2022), in which the court ruled that if there is no reason to arrest the accused individual, just filing a chargesheet would not result in an arrest.

The Supreme Court restated bail jurisprudence and defined several kinds of offences in the third batch of decisions. The court reaffirmed its previous rulings on arrest procedures (S.41,41A and 60A of CrPC).

Following this ruling, the Supreme Court underlined strict adherence to the court’s findings in the Siddharth V State of UP, holding that in circumstances where the prosecution does not require the accused’s custody, there is no need to make arrests under Section 170 of the CrPC.

The court also made it clear that any bail application must be disposed of within a period of 2 weeks and for anticipatory bail, the time period given by the court is six weeks.

The Hon’ble Supreme Court in Nikesh Tarachand Shah V Union of India case that getting bail is a part of our Fundamental Right under Article 21 and it cannot be denied until and unless the law prohibits bail on that offence

DEFECTS OF LAW

The question of bail procedure and categorisation of offences has arrived before the Supreme Court in a lot of cases like Gurbaksh Singh V. State of Punjab, P. Chidambaram V. Directorate of Enforcement, Siddharth V State of UP etc.

Similarly in this case too the court was again put into a dilemma as to whether the police had followed the procedure of bail provided in CrPC, furthermore, the court also found that the Ratio Decidendi given by the court in various cases regarding bail provisions were not being followed by the lower courts and the police personnel.

INFERENCE

The Supreme Court verdict in this case became very famous because of the categorisation of offences done by the court in its three judgements. Further ahead the court went ahead putting clear the circumstances in which the accused cannot be held in custody by the police or by any other agency.

The verdict in this case stated that the economic offences shall not be excluded while considering the granting of bail and the only factor to be considered by the court for granting the bail must be to analyse the seriousness of the accusation and the harshness of the sentence so given.

CITATIONS-

1) Gurbaksh Singh V State of Punjab, AIR 1980 SCR (3) 383

2) P. Chidambaram V Directorate of Enforcement, AIR 2019 SSC OnLine Del 9703

3) Siddharth V State of UP, AIR 2022 1 SSC 676

4) Nikesh Tarachand Shah V Union of India, AIR 2018 11 SCC 1

5) Satender Kumar Antil V CBI , AIR 2021 10 SCC 773

6) Satender Kumar Antil V CBI, AIR 2021 SSC OnLine SC 3302

7) Satender Kumar Antil V CBI, AIR 2022 SCC OnLine SC 825

8) Swarnendu Chatterjee†, The Fundamental Tussle between Bails and Fundamental Rights: Analysing the Vijay Chaudhary Judgment and Determining a Way Forward, SSC online Blog

9) Metalegal Advocates, India: Antil Trilogy: 3 Decisions Of The Supreme Court, Mondaq

 

Gurdeep Kaur

Faculty of Law, University of Delhi