New Delhi: In a period of 17 months, six different judges of the Allahabad High Court heard a bail petition 43 times and yet could not decide on the fate of a bank employee accused of forgery and cheating.
The accused claims he was made a “a scapegoat” in the case.
Finally, the Supreme Court last week released the man on bail while reprimanding the HC for keeping a simple bail application pending since March 2023.
From 20 December, 2023 until now the case appeared before different single-judge benches of the HC, including Justices Sanjay Kumar Singh, Rajeev Misra, Samit Gopal, Sameer Jain, Ajay Bhanot and Raj Beer Singh. Instead of granting bail, the court either adjourned or passed over the case, date after date.
In May, after the bank employee’s lawyer filed an application for urgent hearing before the HC, and it wasn’t taken up for hearing either, they approached the top court for relief.
“We can say that no effective hearing took place in this case despite 43 adjournments. This was a matter of personal liberty and the Supreme Court is very sensitive about these cases. We moved an application for urgent hearing in May before the HC, but that too was not heard. So we were constrained to approach the SC, which issued notice and then granted him the liberty,” the petitioner’s advocate Harshvardhan Jha told ThePrint.
Significantly, only five orders on the application have been uploaded on the Allahabad HC’s website in this case. On 30 different occasions, the case was passed over, without any effective hearing, according to the accused’s appeal in the top court.
Pass over means when a case is not heard in the normal course on a day, the court agrees to hear it later on the same day after it concludes hearing in the remaining cases. Usually passovers are heard on the same day, but can also get adjourned to another date if enough time is not left with the court.
Bail kept in abeyance
In March 2023, when Mishra’s case came before a bench of Justice Rajiv Gupta, he adjourned the case to 26 April, on account of CBI’s lawyer seeking a month’s time to file his counter-affidavit.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took nine months to file its affidavit. When it was submitted in January 2024, the central agency’s affidavit said investigation revealed that Mishra was the competent authority for sanctioning loans as he was the branch head.
Mishra was booked for criminal conspiracy with other co-accused when it came to sanctioning and disbursement of loans as he did not verify the antecedents or background of the borrower and the property kept as collateral security, according to the CBI.
Nearly six months later, the case came before a bench of Justice Rajeev Misra, who directed it to be listed along with a connected matter of a co-accused, who was the alleged middleman.
In February, the case came before Justice Raj Beer Singh who adjourned it to March, saying that it would be taken up among the first 20 matters then. “As prayed, list on 11.03.2025 within the top twenty cases,” he ordered.
A month later, when the case came before Justice Sanjay Kumar Singh, he noted that the applicant had a long criminal history, given that he was involved in 18 cases. In doing so, the court directed the trial court to frame charges in four weeks, while saying that the complainant’s statements must be recorded
“Trial court is directed to frame charges against the accused within four weeks, if the same has not been framed yet. Thereafter, a specific date shall be fixed for recording the statement of the complainant The authority concerned (CBI) shall ensure the production of the complainant on the date fixed before the trial court for recording his statement,” the court said, listing the matter after two months.
In May, Justice Sanjay Kumar Singh took note of the fact that the name of newly-appointed counsel for CBI, Rahul Srivastava, was not shown in the cause list. The court again shifted the matter for hearing a month later to 16 June.
It was then Mishra approached the top court for relief.
Also Read: What SC said on dignity of work, equity and State’s financial constraints in ad-hoc employee ruling
What Supreme Court said
Emphasising that matters of personal liberty should be entertained with utmost speed, the Supreme Court deprecated the Allahabad HC’s practice of repeated adjournments.
“In the present case, the matter has been adjourned on 43 occasions. We do not appreciate the tendency of the High Court to adjourn the matters pertaining to personal liberty of a citizen on such a large number of occasions,” a bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) B.R.Gavai and Justice N.V.Anjaria said Monday, granting relief to the accused who was incarcerated for more than three and a half years.
“Time and again, we have observed that the matters relating to personal liberty should be entertained by the courts with utmost speed,” the SC said, allowing the release of the accused, Ramnath Mishra.
In May, the apex court observed that it granted bail to a co-accused, Lakshya Tawar, whose bail application was pending before the HC, and was adjourned a total of 27 times.
On 22 May, the SC took note that Tawar, who was accused of offences like cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy, had his bail plea adjourned 27 times, before he finally made his way to the top court.
In March, the Allahabad HC adjourned the case once again for two weeks, saying that evidence must be recorded. Before the top court, the CBI argued that Tawar should not be given bail since he was involved in various, similar matters.
“..Normally, we would not have entertained the matter, however, we are inclined to issue notice since we have noticed that the matter has been adjourned by the HC on 27 occasions,” the top court said.
In the matters of personal liberty, HCs are not expected to keep the matter pending for such a long time and do nothing, except for adjourning from time to time, it said, taking note of the fact that Tawar was in prison for over four years.
Granting him bail, the top court had criticised the Allahabad HC’s practice of delaying matters of personal liberty for long.
Origins of the two cases
Both Mishra and Tawar were embroiled in a case of forgery, cheating and criminal conspiracy, in 2020, after Deepak Kalra, an alleged tile emporium owner, did not return a loan of Rs 10 crore from the Punjab National Bank.
As a result, a case was registered by the CBI which named 12 people as accused. Nine got bail, except Tanwar, Kalra and Mishra.
In his plea, Mishra said he approached the HC, seeking bail over a year ago, in December, 2023. After this, his matter came before the court on 40 different occasions, but without any fruitful result given that he was languishing behind bars since December, 2021.
Claiming that he was being made a scapegoat as a branch manager at a nationalised bank, while several other accused were on bail, Mishra told the court that Kalra applied for the Rs 10 crore loan for trading rugs and carpets.
In July, 2017, the loan was sanctioned after Kalra gave a personal guarantee and mortgaged a property. After Kalra failed to pay back the loan, his account was declared to be a non-performing asset.
Interestingly, the true owner of the mortgaged property revealed that she had sold off the property to someone else in 2016, and had not signed any document in Kalra’s favour.
After legal scrutiny and physical inspection of the property, the bank concluded that Kalra fraudulently secured the loan by impersonating the guarantor and mortgaging a disputed property.
Later, Kalra went underground following which a criminal complaint was registered for offences including cheating, using forged documents as genuine, forging valuable security and forgery with intent to cheat.
Mishra contended that as a part of conspiracy to make him a scapegoat; 26 cases were registered against him, whereas he was granted bail in 10, and cognisance was not taken in 8. Among the remaining 8 cases, anticipatory bail was granted in 3, pleas were pending before the court in 3, and closure reports were filed in 2.
Pointing out that Mishra was jailed for the last 4.5 years, his lawyer challenged the HC order, from September, last year, where the court had directed the trial court to frame charges against the bank manager.
Mishra argued that there are several layers of security that banks look at while granting loans so he could not be held responsible for the loan sanctioned in 2017.
In 2020, after a criminal complaint was registered against 12 accused, he was arrested the next year, and had been languishing there since. Contending that there was no evidence to incriminate him, Mishra had argued that prolonged incarceration without commencing the trial would violate his fundamental right under Article 21 (right to life and personal liberty) of the Constitution.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
Also Read: ‘Worse than impeachment’—Legal fraternity on SC’s removal of Allahabad HC judge from criminal roster