New Delhi, March 20 The Supreme Court has modified a part of an anticipatory bail order of the Patna High Court requiring the trial court to take all "coercive steps to ensure that petitioner (accused) is behind bars" upon submission of the charge sheet.
A bench of Justices Ahsanuddin Amanullah and Prashant Kumar Mishra said that the Patna HC, after giving pre-arrest bail because, at that point of time, nothing serious had come against the petitioner-accused, should then have left it open for the trial court to take a call on submission of the charge sheet.
“The learned counsel for the petitioner is correct that there could not have been a specific direction that upon submission of the charge sheet, the (trial) court shall take all coercive steps to ensure that the petitioner is behind bars. The (Patna HC) Court could have just left it open for the trial court to consider the matter upon the petitioner appearing and then taking a call without there being any mandamus issued to take him into custody," the Justice Amanullah-led Bench said.
In its impugned direction passed in August last year, the Patna HC had said that "if charge sheet is submitted against the petitioner connecting him with the offence, in that event, the present anticipatory bail order shall lose its effect and the learned trial court shall take all coercive steps to ensure that petitioner is behind bars".
In the apex court, the petitioner’s counsel contended that such a condition of the accused being taken into custody upon submission of the charge sheet was not proper.
Without interfering with the anticipatory bail order "substantially", the apex court modified the impugned condition. "We modify the direction given in the last paragraph which shall read that since the charge sheet has now been submitted against the petitioner, he is required to appear before the Court on the question of bail in accordance with law based on the materials before the Court without being prejudiced by the order impugned," ordered the Justice Amanullah-led Bench.
Further, it asked the petitioner to appear before the court concerned within a period of three weeks and till then, extended the interim protection granted at an earlier occasion.
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