Shankar vs State Of Haryana
2025 Latest Caselaw 3172 P&H

Punjab-Haryana High Court

Shankar vs State Of Haryana on 11 March, 2025

Author: Sandeep Moudgil

Bench: Sandeep Moudgil

                                    Neutral Citation No:=2025:PHHC:034235


CRM-M-18217-2024                                       1

215

      IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT
                            CHANDIGARH

                     CRM-M-18217-2024
                     DATE OF DECISION: 11.03.2025

      SHANKAR                               ...PETITIONER

                     Versus

      STATE OF HARYANA                      ... RESPONDENT

CORAM:         HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE SANDEEP MOUDGIL

Present:       Ms. Sharmila Sharma, Advocate for the petitioner(s).

               Mr. B.S.Virk, Sr. DAG, Haryana.


        ***
SANDEEP MOUDGIL, J (ORAL)

1. Prayer

This petition has been filed under Section 439 Cr. P.C. for

grant of regular bail to the petitioner in FIR No. 50 dated 08.02.2022 u/s

302, 34 IPC and Section 25 of Arms Act (Challan presented under Section

120-B, 201, 302, 34 IPC & Section 25 of Arms Act), registered at Police

Station Julana, District Jind.

2. Prosecution story set up in the present case as per the version

in the FIR reads as under :-

'Statement of Chand Ram son of Rattan Singh caste Jaat resident of Budakhera Lather aged 60 years M. No.9812942064. Stated that I am permanent resident of above address, I have two sons and one daughter. Elder son is Rakesh and younger is Rawat. Youngest is my daughter Poonam. All three are married. Today, on dated 08.02.2022, I along with my elder son Rakesh were working in our fields at Karsola Road and my nephew namely Amandeep son of Wazir caste Jaat resident of Budakhera was also cultivating fields with his tractor. At about 1:00 noon Amit son of Bijender and

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Prince son of Devender residents of village Budakhera and one another boy came to our fields while riding a motorcycle and started altercating with my son Rakesh. When my son Rakesh ran towards tractor of my nephew Amandeep, in the meantime Amit fired at stomach of my son with the pistol he was armed with. Due to gunshot injury my son Rakesh fell down and Amit, Prince and one another unknown accomplice, fled away from the spot on their motorcycle towards village Karsola. When I and Amardeep reached to Rakesh, he was found dead, due to gun shot injury.

Thereafter Amardeep informed my family members in the village, who reached on the spot. My nephew Vinod son Sunhera gave information to the police regarding the incident. On dated 06.02.2022, my son Rakesh had some altercation with Amit and Prince and Amit and Prince had threatened to kill him. These facts were disclosed by my son Rakesh to me on the same day. Due to above mentioned grudge Amit,Prince and another unknown assailant, whom I can identify, if confronted have murdered my son Rakesh in pursuant to their common intention. It is therefore, requested to you that stern legal action may be taken against killers Amit son of Bijender and Prince son of Devender and another unknown assailant who killed my son. Statement got recorded. Heard. Which is correct. SD/ Chand Ram attested by Ranbir Singh SI, PS Jullana, dated 08.02.2022.'

3. Contentions

On behalf of the petitioner

Learned counsel for the petitioner has argued that the

petitioner has been falsely implicated in the present case as he was earlier

not named in the present FIR. She submits that there is no specific injury

attributed to the petitioner namely Shankar who was implicated as an

accused on the basis of disclosure statement while he was arrested in

another FIR no. 39 Dated 22.02.2022 registered under Sections 25/54/59

of Arms Act at P.S. Bhau Akarpur, Rohtak on account of possessing illicit

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pistol i.e. 315 bore and one life cartridge.

On behalf of the State

On the other hand, learned State Counsel appearing on

advance notice, accepts notice on behalf of respondent-State and has filed

the custody certificate of the petitioner, which is taken on record.

According to which, the petitioner is behind bars for 3 years and 2 days

and is involved in many other FIRs.

Learned State Counsel on instructions from the Investigating

Officer could not controvert the aforesaid fact but would insist on that

gun shot injury has been caused on the person of the deceased but by co-

accused Amit and is in full consonance with the counsel for the petitioner

that no specific role or injury has been attributed to the present petitioner.

4. Analysis

Be that as it may, having regard to the aforesaid

considerations and the fact that challan after completion of the

investigation was presented on 10.05.2022 to the competent Court leading

to the framing of charges on 26.05.2023 and only 7 PWs have been

examined out of total 31 PWs cited by the prosecution. In the said

course, the petitioner has been incarcerated for 3 years and 2 days so far

according to the custody certificate furnished before this Court and as per

the principle of the criminal jurisprudence, no one should be considered

guilty, till the guilt is proved beyond reasonable doubt. In view of the

above said position of the trial it is sufficient for this Court to infer that

the conclusion of trial is likely to take considerable time and therefore,

detaining the petitioner behind the bars for an indefinite period would

solve no purpose.

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Reliance can be placed upon the judgment of the Apex Court

rendered in "Dataram versus State of Uttar Pradesh and another",

2018(2) R.C.R. (Criminal) 131, wherein it has been held that the grant of

bail is a general rule and putting persons in jail or in prison or in

correction home is an exception. Relevant paras of the said judgment is

reproduced as under:-

"2. A fundamental postulate of criminal jurisprudence is the presumption of innocence, meaning thereby that a person is believed to be innocent until found guilty. However, there are instances in our criminal law where a reverse onus has been placed on an accused with regard to some specific offences but that is another matter and does not detract from the fundamental postulate in respect of other offences. Yet another important facet of our criminal jurisprudence is that the grant of bail is the general rule and putting a person in jail or in a prison or in a correction home (whichever expression one may wish to use) is an exception. Unfortunately, some of these basic principles appear to have been lost sight of with the result that more and more persons are being incarcerated and for longer periods. This does not do any good to our criminal jurisprudence or to our society.

3. There is no doubt that the grant or denial of bail is entirely the discretion of the judge considering a case but even so, the exercise of judicial discretion has been circumscribed by a large number of decisions rendered by this Court and by every High Court in the country. Yet, occasionally there is a necessity to introspect whether denying bail to an accused person is the right thing to do on the facts and in the circumstances of a case.

4. While so introspecting, among the factors that need to be considered is whether the accused was arrested during investigations when that person perhaps has the best opportunity to tamper with the evidence or influence witnesses. If the investigating officer does not find it necessary to arrest an accused person during investigations, a strong case should be made out for placing that person in judicial custody after a charge sheet is filed.

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Similarly, it is important to ascertain whether the accused was participating in the investigations to the satisfaction of the investigating officer and was not absconding or not appearing when required by the investigating officer. Surely, if an accused is not hiding from the investigating officer or is hiding due to some genuine and expressed fear of being victimised, it would be a factor that a judge would need to consider in an appropriate case. It is also necessary for the judge to consider whether the accused is a first-time offender or has been accused of other offences and if so, the nature of such offences and his or her general conduct. The poverty or the deemed indigent status of an accused is also an extremely important factor and even Parliament has taken notice of it by incorporating an Explanation to section 436 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. An equally soft approach to incarceration has been taken by Parliament by inserting section 436A in the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.

5. To put it shortly, a humane attitude is required to be adopted by a judge, while dealing with an application for remanding a suspect or an accused person to police custody or judicial custody. There are several reasons for this including maintaining the dignity of an accused person, howsoever poor that person might be, the requirements of Article 21 of the Constitution and the fact that there is enormous overcrowding in prisons, leading to social and other problems as noticed by this Court in In Re-Inhuman Conditions in 1382 Prisons, 2017(4) RCR (Criminal) 416: 2017(5) Recent Apex Judgments (R.A.J.) 408 : (2017) 10 SCC 658

6. The historical background of the provision for bail has been elaborately and lucidly explained in a recent decision delivered in Nikesh Tara chand Shah v. Union of India, 2017 (13) SCALE 609 going back to the days of the Magna Carta. In that decision, reference was made to Gurbaksh Singh Sibbia v. State of Punjab, (1980) 2 SCC 565 in which it is observed that it was held way back in Nagendra v. King-Emperor, AIR 1924 Calcutta 476 that bail is not to be withheld as a punishment. Reference was also made to Emperor v. Hutchinson, AIR 1931 Allahabad 356 wherein it was observed that grant of bail is the rule and refusal is the exception.

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The provision for bail is therefore age-old and the liberal interpretation to the provision for bail is almost a century old, going back to colonial days.

7. However, we should not be understood to mean that bail should be granted in every case. The grant or refusal of bail is entirely within the discretion of the judge hearing the matter and though that discretion is unfettered, it must be exercised judiciously and in a humane manner and compassionately. Also, conditions for the grant of bail ought not to be so strict as to be incapable of compliance, thereby making the grant of bail illusory."

Therefore, to elucidate further, this Court is conscious of the

fundamental principle of law that right to speedy trial is a part of

reasonable, fair and just procedure enshrined under Article 21 of the

Constitution of India. This constitutional right cannot be denied to the

accused as is the mandate of the Apex court in "Hussainara Khatoon

and ors (IV) v. Home Secretary, State of Bihar, Patna", (1980) 1 SCC

98. Besides this, reference can be drawn upon that pre-conviction period

of the under-trials should be as short as possible keeping in view the

nature of accusation and the severity of punishment in case of conviction

and the nature of supporting evidence, reasonable apprehension of

tampering with the witness or apprehension of threat to the complainant.

As far as the pendency of other cases and involvement of

the petitioner in other cases is concerned, reliance can be placed upon

the order of this Court rendered in CRM-M-25914-2022 titled as

"Baljinder Singh alias Rock vs. State of Punjab" decided on

02.03.2023, wherein, while referring Article 21 of the Constitution of

India, this Court has held that no doubt, at the time of granting bail, the

criminal antecedents of the petitioner are to be looked into but at the

same time it is equally true that the appreciation of evidence during the

course of trial has to be looked into with reference to the evidence in

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that case alone and not with respect to the evidence in the other

pending cases. In such eventuality, strict adherence to the rule of denial

of bail on account of pendency of other cases/convictions in all

probability would land the petitioner in a situation of denial of the

concession of bail.

5. Relief

In view of the aforesaid discussions made hereinabove, the

petitioner is directed to be released on regular bail on his furnishing bail

and surety bonds to the satisfaction of the trial Court/Duty Magistrate,

concerned.

However, it is made clear that anything stated hereinabove

shall not be construed as an expression of opinion on the merits of the

case.

The petition in the aforesaid terms stands allowed.

                                     (SANDEEP MOUDGIL)
                                          JUDGE
11.03.2025
anuradha


Whether speaking/reasoned        Yes/No
Whether reportable               Yes/No




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