Punjab and Haryana High Court: Trend of filing bail petition after withdrawal of first must stop

Saurabh Malik

Chandigarh, March 12

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has described as “unfortunate” the tendency among dishonest litigants to file second anticipatory bail petition after withdrawing their initial plea sensing its dismissal by the Bench. Making it clear that the practice was required to be tightly reined in, the Bench also slapped Rs 50,000 costs on a bail petitioner.

The ruling by Justice Vikas Bahl came in a case where an accused sought permission to withdraw the anticipatory bail petition after seeing that the High Court was not inclined to grant the relief. A statement was also made by his counsel that the petitioner was ready to surrender before the police within 10 days. But the petitioner backtracked from the undertaking/statement and chose to file the second petition under Section 438 of the CrPC.

Dubbing it as “complete abuse of the process of the court”, Justice Bahl asserted: “This court would also like to take a note of the unfortunate trend being adopted by unscrupulous litigants in which, as in the present case, the petition for anticipatory bail is argued. When the court is about to dismiss the petition, the counsel for the petitioner, in order to avoid a detailed adverse order, seeks to withdraw the petition and after some days, without any justification, files a second anticipatory bail petition.”

Justice Bahl observed the trend not only wasted the court time, but was also an abuse of the process of the court and was required to be curtailed with a heavy hand.

Justice Bahl asserted the court was also of the opinion that the filing of the second anticipatory bail petition by a different counsel was non-maintainable and also misconceived. As such, it deserved to be dismissed with costs.

Justice Bahl added there was a stark difference between the filing of subsequent/successive anticipatory bail applications and subsequent/successive regular bail applications or pleas for suspension of sentence. Subsequent regular bail plea filed after the withdrawal of first would normally be considered in case of regular bail applications where a person was already in custody. This was because the factum of “further custody” would normally be a “changed circumstance”.

It was always open for an accused in custody to show that his further incarceration for some months/years was a changed circumstance, entitling him to regular bail. Similar would be the position in the case of suspension of sentence. But anticipatory bail could not be treated to be on the same pedestal.

Slaps costs of Rs 50K on petitioner

Making it clear that the practice was required to be tightly reined in, the Bench also slapped Rs50,000 costs on a bail petitioner. The ruling by Justice Vikas Bahl came in a case where an accused sought permission to withdraw the anticipatory bail petition after seeing that the High Court was not inclined to grant the relief.