Supreme Court sets aside bail granted by Allahabad High Court to accused who allegedly shot at Asaduddin Owaisi

The Supreme Court last week set aside the order of the Allahabad High Court granting bail to two persons accused of shooting at a car in which Member of Parliament Asaduddin Owaisi was travelling [Asaduddin Owaisi vs State of Uttar Pradesh and ors]. .A bench of Justices MR Shah and MM Sundresh noted that the High Court did not give any reasons for granting bail to the two accused. " ... it can be seen that there are no reasons at all given while releasing respondent nos. 2 and 3 on bail. Neither any prima facie opinion is given nor even the material collected during the course of the investigation which is now forming the part of the charge-sheet has been dealt with or considered by the High Court. Even the seriousness of the offence alleged for which the charge-sheet has now been filed has not been considered by the High Court," the Court said.The top court, therefore, set aside the order and directed the accused to surrender before the concerned court within a week, and remanded the matter to the High Court for fresh consideration and disposal within four weeks. Owaisi moved the apex court contending that the bail order was passed by the High Court without hearing him, despite him being the victim of the crime. In September, the top court had issued limited notice on whether the matter should be remanded to the High Court for fresh consideration. This was after counsel relied on the judgment of the top court cancelling the bail granted to prime accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri killing, Ashish Mishra, on the grounds that the victims of the crime were not heard. .Advocate MR Shamshad, appearing for Owaisi, submitted during the last hearing that there were four eye witnesses to the incident, with the CCTV footage capturing one of the accused in the act.Advocates Arijit Sarkar and Nabeela Jamil also appeared for Owaisi. Additional Advocate General Vinod Diwakar with advocate Sarvesh Singh Baghel appeared for the Uttar Pradesh government.Senior Advocate Pramod Kumar Dubey with advocates Vivek Gaur, Gaurav Gaur, Abhigya Kushwah, Avinash Mishra, Anurag Andley, Kaustubh Chauhan, Deep Narayan Sarkar, Sunita Yadav, and Pinky Dubey appeared for the accused-respondents. [Read order]