In this case, permission to withdraw the special leave petition has been granted, court find no need to explore the matter further. Nonetheless, court must emphasize the concern about the sluggishness in adhering to previous orders when handling bail applications from the same FIR to prevent conflicting decisions. It should be clarified that courts are not implying that co-accused individuals in such instances always have an automatic right to parity; entitlement to such parity depends on various pertinent facts and factors.
In the SLP (Crl.) No.7203 of 2023, a three-Judge Bench of this Court, through an order on 31.07.2023, acknowledged a similar scenario and stated the following:
“ We’ve noticed instances in the Allahabad High Court where cases arising from the same FIR are presented before different Judges. This results in inconsistencies, with some Judges granting bail while others deny it, despite the applicants’ roles being nearly identical. It’s deemed appropriate that all cases related to a particular FIR should be heard by the same Judge to ensure uniformity in the decisions made.”
Subsequently, having noted the recurrence of similar situations in other High Courts, the Court has decided that the Registrar (Judicial) of this Court should be instructed to transmit this order, alongside a copy of the order dated 31.07.2023 in SLP (Crl.) No.7203 of 2023, to the Registrar (Judicial) of all the High Courts. Upon receiving these directives, the respective High Courts’ Registrars (Judicial) are to present the orders to the Hon’ble Chief Justice for consideration.
The bench consisted of Justices CT Ravikumar and Sanjay Kumar. Written by Samruddhi Kulkarni from ILS Law College pune (BA.LL.B), intern under legal vidhiya.
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