Punjab-Haryana High Court
Faruk Alias Faruq vs State Of Haryana on 22 November, 2024
Author: Sandeep Moudgil
Bench: Sandeep Moudgil
Neutral Citation No:=2024:PHHC:154312
CRM-M-56289-2024 1
IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT
CHANDIGARH
246 CRM-M-56289-2024
DATE OF DECISION: 22.11.2024
FARUK ALIAS FARUQ ...PETITIONER
Versus
STATE OF HARYANA ... RESPONDENT
CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE SANDEEP MOUDGIL
Present: Ms. Aiman J. Chishti, Advocate for the petitioner(s).
Mr. S.S. Pannu, Addl. A.G, Haryana.
***
SANDEEP MOUDGIL, J (ORAL)
1. Relief Sought
This petition has been filed under Section 483 of the
Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 for grant of regular bail to the
petitioner in FIR No. 10 dated 09.01.2020 under Sections 307, 420, 34
IPC, Sections 3, 5, 13, 17 of Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and
Gausamvardhan Act, 2015, Sections 25, 27, 54, 59 of Arms Act, 1959,
Section 11 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 registered
at Police Station Sadar Hansi, Haryana.
2. Prosecution story set up in the present case as per the version
in the FIR reads as under :-
‘To SHO, It is requested that I am Anil Kumar son of Ranbir
Singh resident Jagdish Colony, caste Yadav. I am the President of
Gau Raksha Dal Haryana Hisar District. Around four or five
o’clock I was informed that two vehicles will come from Barwala
side. One of them is RJ02GC-8342 and the other one is HR38N
0530. In which there are cattle. Which are being taken for cow
slaughter. So I went towards Barwala road with my friends
Deepanshu and Rakesh. From there we got on NH-9 and we saw
two vehicles coming from there. So we signaled those vehicles to1 of 7
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stop and on seeing us, they increased the speed of their vehicles.
So we tried to inform the police on number 100 but due to the
network being busy, we could not inform the police. We were
chasing the vehicles. The vehicles came to Hansi Road via Delhi
Road and from there went on to Tosham Road. From Tosham Road
those vehicles went to Putthi Mangal Khan Road. There were 2
vehicles ahead of us and we were behind them. Behind us was a
vehicle which was Maruti Ertiga. The Canter drivers and the
people in the Ertiga started firing at us. While the vehicles were
moving, the tyre of the vehicle in front burst. Because of that the
vehicle behind us also had to stop. We also stopped the vehicle,
and the driver of the Ertiga vehicle coming behind us turned the
vehicle back and fled. When we started going towards the vehicles
from there, we saw people getting down from those vehicles and
running away. We caught one of them. Who told his name as
Dharamveer son of Gopi Ram, caste Bhat resident of Naya Gaon
Rampura Hansi and told the name of his other companion as
Munna and another person whose name and address I do not know
and I do not know who was in the vehicle behind. Then after some
time the police came and started searching the people who ran
away in the fields and the person who was caught i.e. Dharamveer,
had one pistol. We handed over Dharamveer and both the vehicles
to the police. When the police checked both the vehicles, they
found cattle filled inside them. The vehicle whose tyre burst, which
was a canter, had 8 cattle in it, out of which 1 cow was dead. When
the vehicle behind was checked with the help of the police, there
were 12 cattle inside it. That vehicle was a closed container. They
were taking the cattle in the vehicles for cow slaughter and fired at
us with the intention of killing us. Please take the strictest action
against them. SD/ Anil Arya 95418-99955 SD/- Rakesh SD/-
DEEPANSHU 9992222672′
3. Contentions
On behalf of the petitioner
Learned counsel for the petitioner has argued that the
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petitioner has been falsely implicated in the present case and has not
committed any offence as alleged in the present FIR. She submits that the
petitioner has been nominated as an accused only on the basis of the
disclosure statement made by co-accused and neither the petitioner was
arrested from the spot nor any recovery has been effected from him. She
points that the petitioner has been arrested in the instant FIR on
18.06.2024 i.e after four years of the registration. It is her contention that
the main accused namely Dharmbir has already been granted concession
of bail by this Court vide order dated 0.4.06.2020 passed in CRM-M-
6921-2020 and co-accused Munna and Sokat have been granted
concession of bail by Additional Sessions Judge, Hisar vide order dated
12.06.2020.
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 5 months and 4 days.
Learned State Counsel on instructions from the Investigating
Officer opposes the prayer for grant of regular bail stating that the stating
that the petitioner is involved in other FIRs also, meaning thereby he is a
habitual offender but is not in a position to controvert the submissions
made by learned counsel for the petitioner.
4. Analysis
Be that as it may, from the above discussion, it can be culled
out that the petitioner has already suffered sufficient incarceration i.e. 5
months and 4 days, neither the petitioner was arrested from the spot nor
any recovery has been effected from him and he was nominated in the
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present FIR only on the basis of disclosure statement made by co-accused
moreso, similarly situated co-accused have already been granted
concession of bail by 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 and detaining the petitioner behind the bars for
an indefinite period would solve no purpose.
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 whether4 of 7
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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.
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
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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.
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
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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
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. Decision:
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
22.11.2024
anuradha
Whether speaking/reasoned Yes/No
Whether reportable Yes/No
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