The case was occasioned by a violent incident stemming out of an old land dispute between two families in Maharashtra. The case involved a dispute concerning the right of passage through farm land and it had already been pending in court. The husband of the complainant, Namdev Sonavane, went out on 19 August 2022 to leave his daughter at school. Not long after, the complainant was informed that a group of people with iron rods and sticks were beating her husband in the side of a shop.
According to the complainant and her family members, when they rushed to the scene, they saw Namdev on the ground being beaten up by a team of six. The complainant said that the accused also assaulted her when she attempted to intervene and abused her using words that are abusive to her caste. Namdev was injured under several occasions and eventually died in the hospital on 24 August 2022. Following his death, the murder offence got included in the case as well as the offence under the Indian Penal Code and the Act of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities).
The accused were arrested by the police; later the High Court allowed two of them to be on bail. The complainant went to the Supreme Court seeking redress over this grant of bail.
Arguments of the Appellant (Complainant).
The complainant claimed that the High Court had committed a grave error of granting bail even when there was overwhelming evidence against the accused. She claimed she was a wounded eyewitness herself and had distinctly explained the incident on how the accused assaulted her husband with lethal weapons. She says that the High Court had gone wrong by looking at trivial matters including the knowledge of whether it was a particular injury caused by a particular accused.
She further claimed that the High Court has analyzed the medical evidence far too hard on the bail stage, nearly as though it were making a final decision in the case. This, she said, was not right and would be biased against the trial. The next argument of importance was that the High Court considered the previous civil dispute to be one of the reasons to question the complaint when it was actually a motive behind the attack.
It was also argued that the case entailed the killing of an individual of a Scheduled Caste and entailed caste-based abuse, thus the severity of the crime had to be taken more seriously by not allowing bail.
Cases by the Respondents (Accused).
The accused claimed that the High Court has granted bail because it has duly taken into account all the facts. They argued that the civil conflict that the parties had been having over an extended period might have caused false implication. They further indicated that six individuals were reported to have assaulted the victim yet only eight injuries were incurred implying exaggeration and exaggeration of the same.
The other reason was that Namdev died a few days after the incident, hence, making it questionable whether the injuries were the direct cause of his death. The accused further claimed that there were no witnesses who had clearly pointed out which person had inflicted which injury.
Notably, they maintained that bail should not be revoked after it has been granted unless the accused abuses his or her freedom e.g. by distorting evidence, intimidating witnesses, or vanishing. None of these had taken place, so they argued that there was no reason to cancel bail.
Ratio (Legal Principle) Decidendi.
The Supreme Court made a significant legal distinction between the cancellation of bail and staying of an improper bail order. Bail cancellation normally occurs when the accused abuses the freedom available to him or her. A bail order can however be set aside by a higher court in cases where the lower court awarded bail basing on facts missed out or factors that should not have been ignored as well as failure by the court to appreciate the gravity of the offense.
The Court stressed that when it comes to such serious crimes like murder and those related to the SC/ST Act, the court has to pay a close attention to the character of the accusations, how the crime was committed, what role the accused played, and what the crime affected society. Shallowness or nonchalance in the approach of bail in serious crimes may bring down the confidence of people towards the justice system.
The other important principle claimed was that where a criminal act is perpetrated by an unlawful assembly, all members of a group can equally be liable to commit criminal acts that are carried out in the purpose of the common object. As such, the prosecution need not even establish the type of injury by which accused caused which injury at the bail stage.
Analysis and Rational of the Court.
The Supreme Court established that the High Court had applied flimsy and insignificant reasons when bailing out sureties. The case had been pointed out by the High Court that civil litigation had existed between the two parties but the Supreme Court pointed out that the litigation could as readily serve to give the reason behind the attack. It further believed that the High Court was mistaken when it wanted to know the precise role played by each accused, where the case was a group assault that constituted an unlawful assembly.
The Court also noted that there are several severe injuries sustained by the victim which included injuries to the head which caused brain damage. It was actually a plus to the prosecution since multiple injuries were present and this actually helped the prosecution and not undermined it. The Court indicated that the time lag between the attack and the demise was a question that had to be investigated during the trial but not at the bail.
The high court found that the Supreme Court had practically rendered a mini-trial in determining the bail which is not acceptable. Bail in cases of serious crimes particularly those which concern caste-based violence and murder should not be given on the basis of speculations or technicalities.
Judgment
The order given by the High Court to allow bail to the accused was overturned by the Supreme Court. It revoked their bail and ordered them to be surrendered to the trial court in a period of four weeks. The Court also requested the trial court to ensure that the trial was done within a year.
Concurrently, the Court made it clear that it only made the observations on the matter of bail and it should not affect the ultimate decision of guilt or innocence in the trial. The accused were accorded freedom to re-apply to bail once the key witnesses such as eyewitnesses and medical experts are questioned.
