The Calcutta High Court allowed bail to the petitioner, brother-in-law of the victim in a dowry death case, directing release on bond with local surety.
Bail granted on ₹10,000 bond with two sureties of like amount, one local, with conditions to appear, report fortnightly, and not tamper with evidence.
This page shows the compact analysis of this judgement. The full analysis — procedural history, issue-by-issue holdings with ratio and obiter, advocates, and paragraph-level evidence for every claim — is being added to the record in batches and will appear here when this judgement has been through it.
17.08.2021 Item no. 01 (J.C.) Court No.32. S.De. (Allowed)
In the High Court at Calcutta
Circuit Bench at Jalpaiguri
(Via Video Conference)
CRM 750 of 2021
In Re: An application for Bail under Section 439 of the Code of Criminal Procedure filed on 09.07.2021 in connection with Cooch Behar Sadar Woman Police Station Case No. 84 of 2019 dated 15.10.2019 under Sections 498A/307/34 adding Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code.
And
In the matter of : Rajesh Sarkar.
……Petitioner.
Md. Sabir Ahmed, Advocate, Mr. Hillol Saha Podder, Advocate,
……for the Petitioner.
Mr. Tapan Bhattacharyee, Advocate, Ms. Namrata Das, Advocate,
……for the State.
The petitioner is the brother-in-law of the victim lady. The petitioner says that the victim quarrelled with her husband and set herself on fire. She subsequently succumbed to the burn injury four days later in hospital.
We have considered the material in the case diary. There is no statement of the victim. Charge sheet has been filed. The petitioner is in custody for 270 days. There, prima
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facie, does not appear to be anything in the case diary which could directly implicate the petitioner.
We have considered the Post Mortem Report also. It does not mention the degree of burn suffered by the victim.
The State opposes the prayer for bail.
Considering the entire material on record and since charge sheet has been filed, we are of the view that no useful purpose will be served by keeping the petitioner in custody any further.
Accordingly, we direct that the petitioner shall be released on bail upon furnishing a bond of Rs.10,000/- with two sureties of like amount each, one of whom must be local, to the satisfaction of the learned Chief Judicial Magistrate, Cooch Behar, and on further conditions that he shall remain within the jurisdiction of the concerned police station and he shall report to the Officer-in-Charge of the concerned police station once in a fortnight until further orders. The petitioner shall appear before the trial court on every date of hearing until further orders and shall not intimidate the witnesses and/or tamper with evidence in any manner whatsoever.
In the event the petitioner fails to adhere to any of the conditions stipulated above without justifiable cause, the trial court shall be at liberty to cancel the petitioner’s bail in accordance with law without further reference to this Court.
The application for bail is, accordingly, allowed.
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All parties shall act in terms of server copy of the order downloaded from the official website of this Court.
(Arijit Banerjee, J.)
2 issues framed by the court
Whether the petitioner qualifies for bail despite the existence of a charge sheet in a case involving Section 498A and affordance in DOWRY.
Will keeping the petitioner in custody serve any useful purpose given the lack of direct implication in the case diary.
2 provisions across 2 enactments
Rajesh Sarkar
State of West Bengal
Arijit Banerjee
As recorded by the court registry
Judgements on the same questions, provisions and authorities, from every court
