(1) Whenever any person is arrested and detained in custody, and it appears that the investigation cannot be completed within the period of twenty-four hours fixed by section 58, and there are grounds for believing that the accusation or information is well-founded, the officer in charge of the police station or the police officer making the investigation, if he is not below the rank of sub-inspector, shall forthwith transmit to the nearest Magistrate a copy of the entries in the diary hereinafter specified relating to the case, and shall at the same time forward the accused to such Magistrate.(2) The Magistrate to whom an accused person is forwarded under this section may, irrespective of whether he has or has no jurisdiction to try the case, after taking into consideration whether such person has not been released on bail or his bail has been cancelled, authorise, from time to time, the detention of the accused in such custody as such Magistrate thinks fit, for a term not exceeding fifteen days in the whole, or in parts, at any time during the initial forty days or sixty days out of detention period of sixty days or ninety days, as the case may be, as provided in sub-section (3), and if he has no jurisdiction to try the case or commit it for trial, and considers further detention unnecessary, he may order the accused to be forwarded to a Magistrate having such jurisdiction.(3) The Magistrate may authorise the detention of the accused person, beyond the period of fifteen days, if he is satisfied that adequate grounds exist for doing so, but no Magistrate shall authorise the detention of the accused person in custody under this sub-section for a total period exceeding—(i) ninety days, where the investigation relates to an offence punishable with death, imprisonment for life or imprisonment for a term of ten years or more;(ii) sixty days, where the investigation relates to any other offence,and, on the expiry of the said period of ninety days, or sixty days, as the case may be, the accused person shall be released on bail if he is prepared to and does furnish bail, and every person released on bail under this sub-section shall be deemed to be so released under the provisions of Chapter XXXV for the purposes of that Chapter.
The Proof of Guilt
A blog about criminal law, procedure, and evidence.
Friday, April 12, 2024
Guest Post: Section 187 of the BNSS
Thursday, April 11, 2024
Guest Post: The judgment in S. Harish and the CSAM Conundrum in India
“Whoever,...(b) creates text or digital images, collects, seeks, browses, downloads, advertises, promotes, exchanges or distributes material in any electronic form depicting children in obscene or indecent or sexually explicit manner; shall be punished…”
(1) with an intention to share or transmit,(2) for transmitting or propagating or displaying or distributing in any manner at any time except for the purpose of reporting,(3) for commercial purposes
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
Guest Post: Legal Pitfalls in Combating Manual Scavenging
Friday, March 29, 2024
Guest Post: On the Decision in Javed Ahmad Hajam v. Maharashtra
- A message wishing Happy Independence Day of Pakistan, and
- A message terming the abrogation of Article 370 as wrong and August 5th a Black Day for the Indian Republic.
“9. When the emotions and sentiments behind a particular thing or aspect being criticized run high with different shades and hues among different groups of people. In such a case, the criticism, disagreement; difference of opinion, dissent, whatever one may choose to call, must be, expressed upon an in-depth analysis and accompanied by reasons, so that the appeal that such critique makes is not to the emotions of groups of people but to the reason; the logic; the rationale of the groups of people.”
- It prevented any simple disagreement of government actions by citizens, making it dependent upon a complete analysis of merits and cons and providing reasons for disagreement.
- It provided for a very wide criterion wherein such rational analysis needs to be done, i.e., “when emotions behind a particular thing are high.” This by itself and the court’s reasoning further did not shed any light on when such circumstances exist, for presumably, any decision by the government that affect interests of one community will make their emotions High and make criticism by common citizenry almost impossible.
- The gap between the prosecution’s case and the necessary ingredients cannot be bridged by inferences or speculation.
- When such a gap exists, the prosecution’s burden is not discharged, and personal liberty should not be restricted.
Monday, March 11, 2024
Jail is Not the Rule - Restrictive Bail Conditions, After Independence (Part 1)
(This is the third post in a series on restrictive bail regimes)
The previous post considered restrictive bail regimes in India's pre-independence context. In the first of two posts, we travel through independent India's history to look at such regimes.
Partition and Post-War Scarcity
It appears that the earliest instance of a restrictive bail regime in post-independence India came a few months after independence, in the form of the East Punjab Armed Bandits (Arrest and Detention) Act 1947. This law was promulgated to replace an ordinance that had come in less than a month after August 15, 1947, and its provisions give a glimpse of the enormity of violence which was unleashed in the wake of partition in the Punjab region, and the kind of measures resorted to by the state to try and restore a semblance of normalcy. Section 3 thus conferred powers of arresting without warrant any member of an "armed band"; and where resistance was offered to arrest, it legalised using violence to the extent of causing death. Arrested persons were to be sent to 'Concentration Camps' as per Sections 4 and 5 - one can only imagine the treatment envisaged by the state which adopted this language even after the war had given this term such monstrous connotations.
In this remarkable statute, what interests us is Section 9, which carried forward the legacy of Rule 130-A of the Defence of India Rules (which had been repealed by now) and prescribed that "no person accused of an offence made punishable by this act shall if in custody be released on bail" unless (a) the prosecution was given an opportunity to oppose bail, and (b) "where the prosecution opposes the application the court is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for believing that he is not guilty of such offence".
Partition was not the only problem for a nascent Indian republic. A serious issue was post-war shortages in the economy which remained regulated through a complicated system of licenses and controls. The acuity of shortages in essential supplies was not helped by corrupt public servants, hoarders, and profiteers. Official sentiment against such undesirables was so severe that debates in India's Constituent Assembly (which functioned in a dual capacity till 1950) and even its Provisional Parliament contain speeches advocating the harshest measures to be deployed, including flogging in the public square.
You can see where this is leading to. The fight to ensure essential supplies are secured was on a 'war-footing' for the country; an emergency requiring emergency legislation. It was with this mindset that, in 1950, the Provisional Parliament looked to amend the war-time Essential Supplies (Temporary Powers) Act 1946 to enhance its deterrent effect. Besides stiffening penalties and cutting corners in trials, what else did the Provisional Parliament do? Introduce a restrictive bail regime for certain specific crimes through Section 13-A of the Act.
The legislative debates around this specific amendment had been discussed on the Blog earlier. The government accepted that the lineage of the amendment went back to the War, but argued that the issue presented a similar emergency. There were attempts to change the 'not guilty' framing, which placed the burden on an accused, with the old Criminal Procedure Code framing which required the prosecution to first demonstrate that there were reasonable grounds to believe a person was guilty. But these attempts were in vain, and Section 13A was added to the law without any modification.
What the earlier post on amendments to the Essential Supplies (Temporary Powers) Act 1946 did not consider was its history outside of the Provisional Parliament. This suggests that prior to amendments in the central law, there were already provincial statutes covering the same field which had introduced the Rule 130-A style restrictive bail regime, and extended it to any crime under these laws making it much more expansive than the central law introduced later. Furthermore, the proposal to insert a clause identical to Rule 130-A for the central law appears to have been refused initially. Instead, the government seems to have been happy with only adding the requirement for courts to ensure the prosecution was heard, while leaving out the problematic 'not guilty' clause. What prompted the change of heart in the few months leading up to the amendment bill being introduced in the floor of the house? I am sure the answer is in the archives, but I have not been able to locate it yet.
There are some judgments applying the restrictive bail regime found in provincial laws dealing with essential supplies, as well as the central amendment brought in 1950. In Rajulal v. State (1950), the Rajasthan High Court commended on the undesirable state of affairs created by the regime which allowed one party to exercise an undue influence over the course of bail proceedings. Similarly, in Abdul Shakoor (1951), the Rajasthan High Court confirmed that the restrictive bail regime of the central law was comparatively more limited in its reach than the prior state laws. The task of interpreting the central law fell to the Calcutta High Court in Badri Prosad (1951) where a lorry driver was arrested, having been found in possession of bags of rice without a permit. While he claimed lack of knowledge, both the magistrate and sessions court denied bail holding that the presence of rice meant there were no "reasonable grounds" to believe the applicant was not guilty of the offence.
Both Justices Mukharji and Mookerjee agreed that the applicant ought to be released on bail, but the seriousness of Section 13-A prompted them to write separate opinions. Mukharji J. stressed on the limited reach of the clause, and cautioned courts to ensure that allegations against an accused genuinely fit the contours of the specific offences to which the restrictive bail regime applied. In respect of the application of Section 13-A itself, Mukharji J. noted that there were similarities between the Section 13-A and Section 497 of the Code, but went on to observe that:
Here, however, a word of caution is necessary. It is time that there under Section 497, Criminal P. C., what prevents bail is the reasonable ground for believing that the accused is guilty. That in actual practice works more favourably to the accused in the sense that at the early stages, before the regular trial has started, it is easier for the Court without the full materials to say that there are no reasonable grounds for believing that he is guilty and thus admit him to bail. But in a case, however, under Section 13A, Essential Supplies Act, it is the converse and more difficult case of reasonable ground for believing that the applicant for bail is not guilty. It is difficult because in actual practice it is bound to be unfavourable to the applicant for bail in the sense that at the early stages, before the regular trial bas started, it will ordinarily be difficult and may in some cases be impossible for the Court to say without sufficient materials that there are reasonable grounds for believing that he is not guilty. But that is the handicap which the statute has imposed in this case. [Emphasis mine]
It is stated that this Rule is quite unreasonable and repugnant to the elementary notions of Criminal Jurisprudence that a person is presumed to be innocent until it is proved that he is guilty. Neither the Act nor the Rules indicate any attempt to depart from these well-settled principles. Rule 155 merely indicates that where a person is accused of an offence under the Rules the court may not liberate him on bail pending the trial, except when it has reasonable grounds to believe that he is innocent. When the court comes to decide the case, it must acquit the accused if the prosecution has failed to establish the charge. Whether unreasonable or not laws lawfully made have to be given effect to by courts. It must be remembered that many provisions which would appear very harsh or unreasonable in peace time may be justified by necessities of war [Emphasis mine].
War, followed by a tragedy that was nothing short of a war, and then a war again. These were contexts in which a restrictive bail regime was prescribed which circumscribed not just powers of magistrates to grant bail, but also sessions courts and the High Courts. Besides the social and political context surrounding these statutory clauses, attention must also be paid to their catchment area. Even the Defence of India Acts did not introduce a catch-all clause that made the restrictive bail regime applicable to all crimes. Instead, the idea was to pick and choose the kinds of offences justifying these harsh measures. When it came to circumstances akin to war in the eyes of the legislature — essential supplies and the Punjab agitations — the catchment area of the restrictive regime was even narrower, and applied to crimes which had a prima facie element to them which gave the accused at least some chance to be able to discharge the onerous burden placed upon him. Thus, being caught with goods without a license was a situation which the accused could very well explain. This was unlike the wartime measures which imposed restrictions on bail for conduct such as publishing 'prejudicial reports', proving which relied a great deal on the subjective satisfaction of wartime censors and the courts as to the contents of materials.
The next post will turn to statutory developments from the 1970s and thereafter, bringing us to the most recent avatars of the restrictive bail regimes.
Monday, March 4, 2024
Jail is Not the Rule — A History of Restrictive Bail Regimes Pre-Independence
(This is the second post in a series discussing restrictive bail regimes)
This post looks at restrictive bail provisions through Indian legal history, drawing the line at India's independence. The next post will look at post-independence history. A similar exercise was attempted several years ago on the Blog, and a gradual increase in digitisation has meant that even within this short span of a decade, one can try to offer a more nuanced and textured presentation of the issues involved here. However, since this post is, again, based on publicly available material, it may have missed out on some facets, and readers are advised to keep that caveat in mind.
Restrictive Bail Provisions and the Criminal Procedure Codes pre Independence
If we look at bail provisions in the Criminal Procedure Codes of 1882 and 1898 (prior to 1923) in terms of non-bailable offences, it would appear that bail really was the exception for the colonial regime when it came to magistrate courts [the gradual changes to the regime are captured in this paper]. Section 497(1) in the 1898 Code (common in material aspects with the 1882 Code) stated that a person brought before magistrate's court after arrest "shall" not be released on bail if "there appear reasonable grounds for believing that he has been guilty of the offence of which he is accused". This was different from situations where during investigation / inquiry / trial the material only showed "sufficient grounds for further inquiry into his guilt" [Section 497(2)]. Such restrictions were absent when it came to courts of session and the High Court, upon whom Section 498 of the Code conferred an unfettered power to grant bail.
Significant amendments were made to the 1898 Code in 1923. One such amendment was to Section 497(1) which changed the restriction upon magistrates in granting bail only for offences punishable with death or with transportation for life as opposed to all kinds of non-bailable offences. Thus, the policy towards bail was greatly liberalised, but it was felt that some fetters ought to be remain on how magistrate's exercised their discretion. After all, some members called the magistrates 'stupid' and 'weak' during the course of the legislative debates surrounding the 1923 amendments [discussed here at pp. 61-63]. Importantly, this test in Section 497(1) of the 1898 Code was retained in the 1973 Code as well, under Section 437(1).
Old commentaries on the 1898 Code (see p. 1474 here and p. 1183 here) suggest that the legal position prior to 1923 was that bail ought not to be granted by magistrates in non-bailable cases, and that while such restrictions were absent in provisions pertaining to superior courts it did not mean that this was treated as a license to grant bail liberally. The changes in 1923 were acknowledged by the commentators as having liberalised the bail regime and having been interpreted by courts to that effect as well. However, it was a mistake to think that the 1923 amendments had liberalised the regime to such an extent that the merits of the accusations were now altogether irrelevant.
What is important for us here is the discussion on how to construe the test laid down by Section 497(1) which required magistrates to ask whether "there appear reasonable grounds for believing that he has been guilty of the offence of which he is accused". There are two perspectives from which this restriction ought to be considered: first, how did courts read the letter of the law, and second, how was it applied in practice. The old commentaries referred to above offer some insight as to the first aspect, confirming that 'reasonable grounds' was a judicial determination based on the available material which was highly fact-specific. The second aspect, of how courts then applied this vague test, therefore turned on the practice of criminal law at the time. To appreciate this requires some elucidation as it is quite different from how things are done today when it comes to the investigations generally, and specifically the prosecution of serious crime that is punishable with death or transportation for life (today, life imprisonment).
In respect of investigations, police were notorious for not maintaining proper records of statements of witnesses recorded during investigations under Section 161 of the Code. Legally, there was no clear obligation on police to record statements separately within the case diary, and there was absolutely no obligation akin to Sections 173(5) or 207 of the 1973 Code to supply a copy of the police report and all statements of witnesses to the accused upon completing the investigation. The only obligation to supply copies of witnesses arose when the accused wished to cross-examine the witness who took the stand where a witness claimed to have made a prior statement and was now deposing contrary to it.
How would courts deal with framing of charge or appreciating any aspect of the case pre-trial you might wonder, considering how ubiquitous the Section 161 statements are for these issues in the administration of criminal law today. Well, the answer lies in the committal process [see Section 206 of the 1898 Code]. It was not the unsigned, unsworn testimony of the witness which determined issues such as charge and the sufficiency of material prior to trial proper, as it is today. Instead, the committal hearings before the magistrate required the prosecution to examine, on oath, the witnesses that it sought to rely upon to establish its case. The accused had a right to cross-examine these witnesses as well. To help imagine this process, consider what happens today in proceedings instituted upon a complaint in warrant triable cases under the 1973 Code. There are no Section 161 statements in such cases, and the prosecution must examine its witnesses on oath prior to framing charge, with the accused having a right to cross-examine these witnesses as well.
What this trip down memory lane shows us is that while the test as it was under Section 497(1) of the 1898 Code may have been carried forward by the 1973 Code as well in Section 437(1), but the material which formed the basis for applying the test was fundamentally different when it came to applying the test within the 1898 Code's context. Sworn testimony of witnesses who were available from cross-examination was replaced with unsigned, unsworn statements recorded by police officers which the law itself declares ought not to be used as substantive evidence. I will return to this point later on in the series, but it is so significant and rarely raised that it merits being flagged at the outset itself.
Restrictive Bail Provisions and Special Laws
The previous part referred to the classification drawn by Section 497(1) and (2) of the 1898 Code. The former (at least till 1923) restricted the power of magistrates to grant bail where reasonable grounds existed to support a belief that the accused was guilty, while the latter permitted bail if the material was only enough to suggest further grounds for inquiry into guilt.
Keeping this in mind, perhaps the first proper restrictive bail regime we encounter was under the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1908, one of the harshest statutory measures crafted by the colonial regime to punish revolutionaries at the time. Amongst its provisions was a clause, Section 12, which stated that a person shall not be released on bail "if there appear sufficient grounds for further inquiry into the guilt of such person." The reference to Section 497 helps appreciate the draconian nature of this threshold. Having 'sufficient grounds for further inquiry' was nothing but a polite way of allowing bail rejections where the police averred that they had a case. These parts of the 1908 were repealed in 1922, while the remaining parts of it pertaining to declaring certain associations as unlawful and proceeding against them remain in force even to this day.
Perhaps it was the presence of the 1908 Act that did not necessitate further restrictions upon the bail regime during the First World War. Its repeal in 1922, coupled with the liberalising influence of the 1923 amendments, meant that when the Second World War reached the subcontinent, the colonial regime was without comparable legislation to curb the grant of bail. When the War came to India, the government responded with the Defence of India Act 1939 and rules made thereunder, which allowed for a truncated trial for many crimes that had any bearing on the war effort. Still, in 1939 itself, this war-based procedural regime did not have a dedicated restrictive bail regime. That came in February of 1941 with the introduction of Rule 130A which read as under (p. 192 here):
Notwithstanding anything contained in the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898, no reason accused or convicted of a contravention of these Rules shall, if in custody, be released on bail or on his own bond, unless —
(a) the prosecution has been given an opportunity to oppose the application for such release, and
(b) where the prosecution opposes the application and the contravention is of any such provision of these Rules as the Central Government or the Provincial Government may by notified order specify in this behalf, the Court is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for believing that he is not guilty of such contravention.
The archives suggest that the proposal emanated from provincial governments which were troubled by how quickly bails were granted by courts without adequately hearing the prosecution. They do not offer much by way of discussion on the specific test that was added in clause (b). Is this because the test was no different from the existing regime under the 1898 Code? I would caution against such a reading, because Rule 130A inserted a rather different set of restrictions.
First, Rule 130A applied to all courts, which was a significant departure from the existing position that did not fetter the discretion of sessions courts and the High Courts to grant bail no matter what the allegations were. Second, Rule 130A now vested great power with the government, by placing a premium on its decision to oppose the plea for bail. If the prosecution did not oppose bail, then the additional restrictions would never come into play. Third, the test itself was worded differently than Section 497(1) which cast different obligations on the players. Section 497 of the Code was read as placing the onus upon the prosecution asking it to furnish material to show reasonable grounds existed to believe a person was guilty, whereas Rule 130A placed asked the accused to establish reasonable grounds to believe that he was not guilty. The former resembles the burdens at trial - if the prosecution did not establish its case first, the accused would not have any case to answer. The latter invited the court to assume the truth / veracity of what the prosecution brought forth, and burdened the accused to demonstrate the grounds within this material which supported his innocence.
The validity of the provision was challenged in re V. Bhuvaraha Iyengar [AIR 1942 Mad 221], where it was argued that the clause departs from the "fundamental principle" that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The Madras High Court rejected the contention, stating that the impugned Rule did no such thing but only indicated "that where a person is accused of an offence under the rules the Court may not liberate him on bail pending the trial, except when it has reasonable ground to believe that he is innocent. When the Court comes to decide the case, it must acquit the accused if the prosecution has failed to establish the charge." That is a non-reasoned answer if there ever was one. The Court also rejected the bail request, noting that "grave charges are alleged against the petitioner by a responsible police officer and a the stage at which the applications for bail were made it was impossible for the magistrate or the sessions judge to be satisfied that there were reasonable grounds for believing that the petitioner was not guilty of a contravention of the rules, and that is the position now."
The above extract gives us a glimpse of what Rule 130A was meant to achieve: a practical annulling of bail prior to the cross-examination of key witnesses at trial for the offences which were designated as being important to the war effort. In an already truncated legal procedure the court would never be faced with a situation where grave charges were not levelled by responsible officers with some material to support their claims, except for the most egregious of false cases. A court would presumably only be able to develop reasonable grounds to believe that the person was not guilty during a trial due to cross-examination of witnesses as at trial the burden still lay upon the prosecution to prove guilt as held by the Madras High Court.
Next Post
This post has surveyed the historical position in the general law and the special law on matters of bail, drawing the line at 1947. We saw how the general position on bail changed from being a very restrictive one — at least in respect of magistrate courts — to a more liberal one during the inter-war period. The onset of the Second World War brought with it a new set of restrictive measures and introduced Rule 130A in the Defence of India Rules. In the next post, we will see how the memories of this wartime measure would continue to echo all through the history of the constitutional republic of independent India.