Human liberty is sacrosanct: Calcutta High Court reaffirms bail to accused after its order was set aside by Supreme Court

The Calcutta High Court recently reaffirmed its order granting bail to an accused after the Supreme Court had set aside the same, observing that human liberty is most valuable to every civilized human being. [Prabha Surana v. State].A Bench of Justices IP Mukerji and Biswaroop Chowdhury held,"When it is said that the gravity of offence would be a factor in determining whether bail is to be granted, it does not mean that the court has to adjudicate on the elements of the crime or the charges to find out its nature, extent and depth. On the basis of the charges framed, the court is only required to ascertain the nature of the crime...".It is only required to assess the gravity of the offence from an assessment of the fact whether there are reasons to believe that the accused is guilty of the crime, the magnitude of the offence on the charges levelled against him and the sentence he would undergo if those charges were proved, the Court added..The Bench was dealing with a criminal case arising out of a dispute between two parties pertaining to misappropriation of money. The petitioner was accused of misappropriating crores of money collected from the public from 2011 onwards. The person aggrieved by this alleged misappropriation did not file a complaint until 2020.The petitioner was in custody for 135 days when she moved a bail application before the High Court on January 10 this year. At that point, one co-accused in the case had been granted bail. A special leave petition (SLP) challenging this bail order, moved by the de-facto complainant in the Supreme Court, was dismissed on October 31, 2022. Based on these facts, the High Court had granted bail to the petitioner.Consequently, aggrieved by the grant of bail by the High Court, the State moved the Supreme Court again with a SLP, which was allowed. On March 3, the apex court remanded the matter to the High Court after setting aside the bail order..While justifying its decision to reaffirm its bail order, the High Court referred to a number of apex court judgments. These verdicts held, among other things, that human liberty was invaluable, there was a presumption of innocence unless an accused was proved guilty, commission of an economic offence did not disentitle the accused to bail and bail, not jail, was the rule..The Court noted that in the present case, after filing of the criminal complaint by the de-facto complainant, the investigation was quickly carried out by the investigating agency by seizure of documents, tracking of all bank accounts, their attachment and so on."By 2020 the petitioner would have destroyed whatever evidence it wanted to destroy to absolve her of the crime. If she did not, in my opinion, there is little chance of its destruction now," the Court observed..Since the accused had not absconded for more than 12 years, there is little reason to believe that she would do so now, the Court opined."She has surrendered her passport with the investigating agency. Furthermore, there is little scope of recovery of more evidence to convict the accused...Just a mere submission that more investigation is required, is not enough unless some proof is laid before the court that there are some materials on which further charges can be framed and that the accused is in a position to tamper with that evidence or otherwise interfere with the trial," the Court held.With these observations, the Court granted bail to the petitioner upon furnishing a bond of ₹10,000 with two sureties..Senior Advocate Ratnanko Banerjee along with Advocates Ayan Bhattacharya, Abhijit Chowdhury and Aditya Ratan Tiwary represented petitioners.Advocates Sandipan Ganguly, Arnab Sardar, Anurag Sardar and Sayan Mukherjee represented de-facto complainant.Advocates Saswata Gopal Mukherji, Neguive Ahamed and Jonaki Saha represented the State..[Read Order]