Playing fraud with court: HC dismisses successive bail plea for concealment of facts

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has held that filing successive bail applications without disclosing earlier rejections amounts to “playing fraud with the court” and pollutes the stream of justice. Justice Namit Kumar dismissed a second bail plea by an accused under the POCSO Act after finding “active concealment and suppression of material facts”.

“This court has no hesitation to say that this is a case in which an attempt has been made with an oblique motive to deceive the court and pollute the stream of administration of justice and any person who takes recourse to the method of suppression in a court of law by not disclosing all the material facts fairly and truly and states them in a distorted manner either by way of manipulation, manoeuvring or misrepresentation to mislead the court, is, in actuality, playing fraud with the court,” Justice Kumar asserted.

The court observed that the accused seeking bail in connection with the FIR registered under Sections 363, 366, 376 DA of the IPC and Section 6 of the POCSO Act at Mohali had “conspicuously remained silent and deliberately chose not to annex the order showing dismissal of his previous bail application on merits”.

Referring to the petition, Justice Kumar asserted suppression in pleadings could not be tolerated: “The fact qua filing of any previous or successive bail application has been mentioned in a very suppressive and colourable manner, especially by not attaching the final order with the petition, which otherwise should have been attached. It smells that such suppression of material facts… appears to have been done just for the obvious reason and intention that this court… may be refrained from examining whether there exists any ‘change in circumstance’.”

Invoking the legal maxim “supressio veri, expressio falsi” — suppression of truth is equivalent to the expression of falsehood — the court held that its inherent power allows it to prevent abuse of process by refusing to proceed further with examination of such a case on merits.

Justice Kumar added an accused had a right to make successive applications for grant of bail and the court entertaining subsequent bail pleas had a duty to consider the reasons and grounds on which the earlier bail applications were rejected. “A subsequent bail application is maintainable only when there is a substantial change in circumstance, either in fact or in law,”

Concluding that the petitioner had not approached the court with clean hands, Justice Kumar ruled: “Since the petitioner has misused the process of law by filing successive bail application by not disclosing the material fact qua dismissal of his previous bail application on merits… this court finds that there is an active concealment and suppression of material facts on the part of the petitioner, and therefore, the instant petition is liable to be dismissed at the very threshold.”