Accused not entitled to default bail for trial court not taking cognisance of charge sheet: SC

The Supreme Court Monday said an accused is not entitled to statutory bail under the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) on the ground that a trial court has not taken cognizance of the charge sheet filed by the probe agency before the stipulated 60 or 90-day period.

The apex court's significant legal observation came in a verdict which aside the default bail granted to founder and Managing Director of Adarsh Credit Cooperative Society, Mukesh Modi and Rahul Modi in a case pertaining to syphoning over Rs 200 crore of the depositors.

The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), in its appeal, had challenged the grant of default bail by the high court on the ground that the trial court did not take cognizance of the charge sheet within the statutory period prescribed under CrPC.

Under section 167 (2) of the CrPC, an accused becomes entitled to grant statutory bail if the probe agency fails to file the charge sheet in the trial court within the stipulated period of either 60 or 90 days.

A probe agency gets mandatory 90 days for filing the charge sheet in cases, where the punishment prescribed is between 10 years jail term to the death penalty and it gets 60 days for filing the probe report where the maximum sentence is below 10 years.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court extended the benefit of statutory bail provision by holding that it can be granted in cases where the cognizance of the charge sheet has not been taken by the trial court.

Faced with the tricky legal issue, a bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao and B R Gavai referred to several key judgements on the issue and set aside the high court verdict.

“In all the...judgments which are relied upon by either side, this Court had categorically laid down that the indefeasible right of an accused to seek statutory bail under Section 167(2), CrPC arises only if the charge-sheet has not been filed before the expiry of the statutory period,” it said.

It said introducing an additional requirement of cognisance being taken by the trial court for denying the bail was not permissible.

The order of May 31, 2019, of Punjab and Haryana High Court granting statutory bail to the father-son duo in the case was challenged by SFIO.

The SFIO alleged that the high court committed a “serious error in granting statutory bail... in spite of the fact that the complaint was filed well before the expiry of 60 days from the date of the remand.”

The father-son duo was arrested by the SFIO of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs in December 2018 for committing an alleged fraud by syphoning over Rs 200 crore of over 20 lakh depositors through an alleged Ponzi scheme.

The Ahmedabad-based society was operational since 1999.

Mukesh and Rahul were arrested in December 2018 but were released on interim bail with effect from December 21 till April 1 following a Delhi High Court order.

However, the Supreme Court, on March 27, 2019, had set aside the order on an appeal filed by the SFIO and had directed the duo to surrender before a special court in Gurgaon.

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