Sanchar Anand, Advocate, Supreme Court of India
ABSTRACT
The question arises why should there be a provision for anticipatory bail at all? The question is of great public importance bearing at once on personal liberty and the investigational powers of the police. The society has a vital stake in both these interests, though their relative importance at a given time depends upon the complexions and restraints of political conditions.
When the even flow of life becomes turbid, the police can be called to enquire into charges arising out political antagonism. The powerful process of criminal law can be perverted for achieving extraneous ends. Attendant upon such investigations, when the police are not free agents within their spheres of duty, is the great amount of inconvenience, harassment and humiliation. That can even take the form of parading a respectable person in handcuffs, apparently on the way to a Court of Justice. The foul deed is done when an adversary is exposed to social obloquy, no matter when and whether conviction is secured, or is at all possible.
Once arrested, it means that the accused is in the full control of the police for at least twenty four hours, during which there is a serious threat of inconvenience. Moreover, those who have long experience of the law courts realize that there are cases (however, few and far between they may be) when the police under the cover of its duties direct its energy towards the harassment and prosecution of a person, who ought to have been left alone. The police cause the person indignity and hardship which cannot be adequately described. It may be that a good and respectable citizen is the object of this attention. If in such circumstances, or others like it, a person was to approach the Court, no harm can be conceived if an anticipatory bail is allowed.
The bail in anticipation affords more convenience to the public and if the accused were in any way to abuse the privileges of bail, it may be cancelled. Anticipatory bail is not only in conformity with liberalized policy of law but is a measure which in no way obstructs the course of justice.
Hence, “the necessity for granting anticipatory bail arises mainly because sometimes influential persons try to implicate their rivals in false cases for the purpose of disgracing them or for other purposes by getting them detained in jail for some days. In recent times, with the accentuation of political rivalry, this tendency is showing signs of steady increase. Apart from false cases, where there are reasonable grounds for holding that a person accused of an offence is not likely to abscond, or otherwise misuse his liberty while on bail, there seems no justification to require him first to submit to custody, remain in prison for some days and then apply for bail.
Keywords: Bail, Misuse, Liberty, Prison, Prosecution etc.
