Theme: Bail

For non-bailable offences the Court can refuse to grant you bail when the punishment for the crime you have committed has: 

• Death penalty,
• Prison for life,
• Jail time of more than 7 years,
• If the offence is cognizable, 
• Been convicted previously on two or more occasions of a cognizable offence punishable with imprisonment of three years or more but not less than seven years.

 

In cases where the Court feels that during the various stages of the proceeding, a person is:

• Intimidating, bribing or tampering with the witnesses,
• Trying to abscond or flee. 

Then the Court may cancel the bail, and re-arrest the person. This is applicable to both bailable and non-bailable offences. Cancellation happens if the person’s conduct subsequent to his release may hamper the proceedings of the case and the possibility of a fair trial. 

Some cases where you can be granted bail when charged with a non-bailable offence are:

• If it appears to the officer or the court at any stage of the inquiry or trial that the accused has not committed the non-bailable offence, then the accused can be granted bail. 
• If the trial of a person accused with non bailable offence takes more than 60 days, and the person has been in jail all this while, then the court can release him and grant him bail.

The law allows a person to apply for bail even when he has not been arrested, but fears arrest in the near future. This type of bail is known as anticipatory bail. The police cannot arrest a person who has an anticipatory bail order.  

 

Anticipatory bail will kick in only when an FIR is filed against you or if the police have come to arrest on the basis of the FIR. It isn’t available in all states; such as Uttar Pradesh.  

 

Often, fake and frivolous cases are filed against other people. This leads to harming of reputation and time of other persons. To avoid such problems, a person, if they have reasons to believe that they may be arrested for a non-bailable offence in the future, can apply for bail in the High Court or the Court of Session even before they are arrested. If the court finds good reasons for this bail application, then the court may allow for bail. When an application for anticipatory bail is finally being heard, it is compulsory for the person applying for this bail to be present before the Court. 

 

The protection provided by this type of bail is only for a limited period and generally till the police have framed the charges against you. However, one can make an application to the High Court to have this period of anticipatory bail extended.

 

The person who is applying for anticipatory bail has to satisfy or promise to satisfy the following conditions:

 

• The person should make themselves available for interrogation by a police officer when required.
• The person should not, directly, or indirectly induce, threaten or promise any person who knows the facts of the case to stop them from disclosing such facts to the court or to any police officer.
• The person should not leave India without the prior permission of the court.
• Other conditions are similar to that of regular bail.

 

People who are in jail while their trial is going on are called under-trials prisoners. As trials in India go on for years together, under-trial prisoners should be protected from being in jails for long periods of time without being proved guilty of committing the crime. The law has provisions of Bail to protect undertrials. 

If a person has been arrested for a crime and has been in prison while undergoing trial for up to half of the maximum period of imprisonment specified for the crime that they have committed, the Court must order to release them. 

However, if the Court find enough reasons, it can order continued detention of the under-trial prisoner, even after they have been in prison for one half of the punishment.