Kriti Agrawal –
The Delhi High Court division bench of Justice Siddharth Mridul and Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani delivered its verdict in the appeal against the denial of bail to Delhi Riots suspect Asif Iqbal Tanha, holding that no offence under sections 15, 17 or 18 UAPA is made-out against the appellant (Tanha) on a prima facie appreciation of the subject charge-sheet and the material cogent evidence.
Rejecting the State’s submissions that the High Court, in deciding an appeal under Section 21 of the NIA Act, must consider the grant or denial of bail only within the parameters of Section 437 CrPC. and not under Section 439 CrPC.
ASG Aman Lekhi, representing the State, further argued that the decision of a three-Judge Bench of the Hon’ble Supreme Court in K. A. Najeeb’s case was made against the backdrop of an extended period of incarceration of the accused person as an undertrial and there being no likelihood of the trial being completed in a reasonable time, and would not apply when deciding on the issue of bail in the pre-trial.
The Court asked, rejecting the submission that, “Should this Court then wait until the appellant has languished in prison for a long enough time to see that it will be impossible to complete the deposition of 740 prosecution witnesses in any foreseeable future, especially in light of the prevailing pandemic when all proceedings in the trial are effectively stalled?”
The Court based its decision on the principles laid out by the Hon’ble Supreme Court’s Constitution Bench in the A.K. Roy case, which stated that the requirement that crimes be defined with appropriate definitiveness is a fundamental concept of criminal law and must be regarded as a pervading theme of our Constitution.
The Bench stated, “There is no allegation in the subject charge-sheet that the appellant was leading the co-conspirators who are alleged to have been indulging in the stated acts; nor that he had formed the JCC; nor that he was even the group administrator of any of the WhatsApp groups, which, the allegation goes, were formed with the sinister aim of organizing a protest against the CAA that wreaked havoc amongst ordinary citizenry.”