Supreme Court slaps ₹25,000 fine on Gujarat cop for arresting accused who got anticipatory bail

The Supreme Court on Monday imposed costs of ₹25,000 on a police officer from Gujarat for the wrongful remand and arrest of an accused who was out on anticipatory bail. [Tusharbhai Rajnikantbhai Shah v. State of Gujarat].A Bench of Justices BR Gavai and Sandeep Mehta closed proceedings against the sessions judge who allowed the same, after accepting her unconditional apology.Both had been held guilty of contempt of court earlier..The Bench had on August 7 held the Gujarat judicial magistrate and police inspector guilty of contempt of court.It had asked the contemnors, policeman RY Raval and Surat Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Deepaben Sanjaykumar Thakar to be present before it today to decide the quantum of sentence.The accused had moved the apex court over his wrongful arrest and remand despite getting anticipatory bail. The Court had held that its order of December 2023 granting interim bail to the accused had clearly left no room for doubts that the protection was absolute, until modified or altered.It was also alleged by the accused that the police in Surat, on remanding him, had physically assaulted him and sought to extort ₹1.6 crore..During today's hearing, Justice Mehta dismissed arguments on leniency made by counsel for the contemnors, saying,"Do you propose even for a minute for rule of law to mean liberty can be curtailed for three days despite our order? It was totally malafide remand on the face of it. Apology only on paper,:Justice Gavai pointed out that even the CCTV footage of alleged police torture of the accused is conveniently missing.The Bench then proceeded to pass its order, where it deleted the following observation from its earlier order with respect to the district judge:"The contemnor-respondent No. 7’s contumacious actions also contributed to the illegal detention of the petitioner for almost 48 hours after the period of police remand had come to an end."It asked that the departmental proceedings against the contemnors be taken to its logical conclusion..The Gujarat High Court had on October 5 last year refused to allow anticipatory bail to the accused after the magistrate's remand order, leading to the instant appeal before the top court along with a contempt of court application.The Supreme Court had issued notice to the Gujarat government and concerned Surat Police officials in the appeal against the same on December 12 that year.While hearing the matter in January, the Bench had pulled up the concerned Surat magistrate and the Gujarat Police.The State had then informed the Court that the officials in question had been suspended..Solicitor General Tushar Mehta appeared for the Gujarat government.Senior Advocates Manish Singhvi and K Parameshwar appeared for the contemnors.