Uttarakhand High Court
CRLA/512/2022 on 3 August, 2023
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03.08.2023 CRLA No. 512 of 2022
Hon'ble Sharad Kumar Sharma, J.
Mr. Arvind Vashisth, Senior
Advocate, assisted by Mr. Shakib Hussain,
Advocate, for the appellant.
Mr. T.C. Aggarwal, Deputy Advocate
General, for the State.
To answer the arguments which
have been extended by the learned Senior
Counsel for the petitioner in support of the
Bail Application (IA/1/2022), the basic
ingredients required under Section 307 in
order to convict an accused for the offence,
to be involved in commission of the said
offence are the 'intention' and 'knowledge'.
The consequence is, exclusively
based upon, not the reason which is
prescribed under Section 307, which does
not, at any place, state, that vitality of the
injury and its seriousness will have any
consequences for the purposes of bringing
an offence under Section 307, because
causing of an injury on a person upon
assault being made, in itself, is not
exclusively one of the necessary parameters
to bring an act under Section 307. Even an
act without an injury too could be
established to be falling under Section 307,
if there is any existing element of intention
and knowledge.
The exception which has been
attempted to be carved out by the learned
counsel for the appellant herein, in the
instant case is from the doctor's medical
report which has been submitted with
regard to the victim; and the doctor has
opined that the nature of injury which has
been suffered by the victim was simple in
nature and as such the Court, while
exercising its discretionary powers while
considering the offence under Section 307,
should take a pragmatic view, in the light of
an infringement of one's right of liberty
granted to a citizen of the country under the
Constitution of India.
A right of liberty envisaged under
the Constitution is not an unfettered right.
Article 21, itself, is subjected to certain
conditions, restrictions and exceptions,
which have been contained in it. An accused
person and particularly in the instant case,
when he has assaulted the victim, he has
caused injuries, but it has not caused any
serious or grievous injuries, the same may
be because of the fact that the victim had
chance or luck on that day of the incident.
The injury might not have hit the
victim at a vital part of the body which could
have been determined by the Medical
Officers as to be vital or fatal to the life.
As already observed that fatality of
an injury is not an exclusive ground for
considering the implications of Section 307,
particularly when it is satisfied that the
"intention" and "knowledge", and
particularly here in this case the intention, is
quite apparent when the nature of the act
as described by the doctor's medical report
shows that there was blackening and
tattooing.
The argument has also been
extended from the perspective, that as of
now the applicant has already served 8
months and 13 days of the total sentence
that has been imposed upon him by the
judgment of conviction on 25.11.2022. If
that is read in correlation to the total
sentence imposed upon him for 5 years
under Section 307, he deserves to be
considered for grant of bail.
The proportionate ratio of serving
the sentence out of the total sentence of 5
years, as imposed upon him, will not be
exclusively in consonance to the ratio laid
down by the Hon'ble Apex Court in the
judgment as rendered in Special Leave to
Appeal (Crl.) No. 529 of 2021, Sonadhar Vs.
State of Chhattisgarh, pertaining to serving
of the sentence as to be sufficient to
consider, as to be a case falling under one of
the parameters for the grant of bail.
Prima facie, at this stage this Court
is of the view that since there was a firearm
injury and that was made from the close
range, it will be an offence falling under
Section 307, and since the surrounding
evidences are still to be considered at the
stage when the Appeal itself is to be
decided on merits, this Court is refraining to
observe as to what impact it will carry,
which will be an issue to be argued by the
learned counsel for the appellant when the
appeal itself is considered at the final stage.
Thus, looking to the nature of
injuries and considering the medical report
as submitted by the doctor, which has been
stressed upon by the learned counsel for
the appellant, this Court is of the view, that
since on an overall entirety of the incident
satisfies the ingredients of Section 307, the
applicant is not entitled to be released on
bail, and hence the bail application stands
rejected.
Apart from that fact, it also doesn't
fall within the ambit of the judgment of the
Hon'ble Apex Court, as has been rendered
in the matters of Sonadhar (supra), where
the period of serving of sentence could at all
be attributed to be considered at the stage
of exercise of discretionary powers for the
grant of bail.
Since the instant case is outside its
ambit and the guidelines framed, therein,
this Court is not inclined to release the
applicant on bail. The bail application would
accordingly stand rejected.
(Sharad Kumar Sharma, J.)
03.08.2023
Mahinder/
