Allahabad HC refuses to cancel bail granted by Mahoba trial court on second plea after HC had rejected first
On remand from the Supreme Court, Justice Samit Gopal dismissed the appeals of the brother of a petrol pump employee who died after a glass door was smashed into his neck, holding that the Special Judge had granted bail on detailed orders after two prosecution witnesses were examined and that nothing showed misuse of liberty, tampering or non-cooperation.
Two men accused of killing a petrol pump employee in Mahoba in July 2024 will stay on bail. Justice Samit Gopal of the Allahabad High Court on 28 October 2026 dismissed two appeals by Hirdesh Kumar, the brother of the deceased, which sought cancellation of the bail the Special Judge (SC/ST Act), Mahoba, had granted to Junaid Khan alias Sheebu and Arsheel alias Amaan on their second bail applications, after the High Court itself had rejected their first. The appeals had already been allowed once, in December 2025, by another bench that cancelled the bail without hearing the accused; the Supreme Court set that order aside in April 2026 for violation of natural justice and sent the matter back. This time, hearing all sides, the court held that the trial court’s orders were detailed, considered the earlier rejections and the evidence of two prosecution witnesses, and that nothing had been shown to bring the case within the settled grounds for cancelling bail.
A smashed glass door at a Mahoba petrol pump
The first information report was lodged on 17 July 2024 at Police Station Kotwali, Mahoba, as Case Crime No. 350 of 2024, by Adarsh Kumar Gupta, who runs a Reliance petrol pump in Gandhi Nagar, Mahoba. His employees Amit Verma, employed as DSM, and Brajesh Kumar, a pick-up tanker driver, were in the pump office at about 1.30 am on the night of 16 and 17 July when two unknown men arrived on a motorcycle and tried to get the office door opened. Amit Verma went to the door and spoke to them; when he opened it, one of the men caught him by his vest, pulled him outside, abused and assaulted him. He freed himself, went back in and shut the door. The man outside then forced the glass door, which broke, and the glass pierced Amit Verma’s neck. He fell unconscious and the two men fled on their motorcycle. He was taken to Sadar Hospital, Mahoba, and referred to Jhansi. The FIR said Brajesh Kumar had seen the incident and that CCTV footage was available.
Amit Verma died, and the post-mortem on 20 July 2024 recorded a surgically stitched wound with twelve stitches over the right side of the neck, with the underlying muscles bruised and stitches over the vascular structures. The cause of death was injury to the neuro-vascular structures of the neck. The charge sheet of 17 September 2024 named Arsheel alias Amaan and Junaid Khan alias Sheebu under Sections 352, 103(1), 115(2) and 3(5) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and Sections 3(1)(r), 3(1)(s), 3(2)(5A) and 3(2)(5) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The Special Judge took cognizance on 15 October 2024 and framed charges on 25 October 2024.
First bail refused by the High Court, second bail granted by the trial court
The Special Judge rejected the first bail applications on 25 September 2024 (Sheebu) and 7 November 2024 (Arsheel). Their appeals under Section 14-A(2) of the SC/ST Act were dismissed by a common order of the High Court on 9 April 2025. That bench recorded that the deceased belonged to the SC/ST community, that a serious injury had been caused in furtherance of the common intention of both accused, that there was no possibility of false implication, that the investigating officer had collected ample evidence of their active participation, and that they had been sufficiently identified not only by the eyewitness but by the CCTV footage, in a case where one person had lost his life.
The trial then began. The informant Adarsh Kumar Gupta was examined as PW-1 on 4 June and 1 July 2025, and Brajesh Kumar as PW-2 on 1 August 2025. Arsheel filed a second bail application on 18 August 2025 and was granted bail on 3 September 2025; Junaid Khan filed his on 4 September 2025 and was granted bail on 9 October 2025. Hirdesh Kumar appealed against both orders.
A co-ordinate bench heard the appeals on 15 December 2025. The accused, though served, did not appear. The Additional Government Advocate conceded that it was not proper for the trial court to entertain a second bail application after the High Court had rejected the first. Relying on Kalyan Chandra Sarkar v. Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav, AIR 2005 SC 921, the bench found that the trial court had failed to record the grounds on which the High Court had rejected bail or any fresh grounds for taking a different view, had wrongly refused the prosecution’s request to defer the hearing until an application for further investigation about uncollected CCTV footage was decided, and that even its stated grounds were unconvincing. It cancelled both bail orders and directed the accused to surrender within two weeks.
The Supreme Court remand, and a listing problem
Both accused went to the Supreme Court in SLP (Crl.) No. 880 of 2026 and SLP (Crl.) No. 1123 of 2026, where they received interim protection on 19 January and 6 February 2026. On 2 April 2026 the Supreme Court granted leave, found that bail granted by the Sessions Court had been cancelled at the instance of the informant’s side without the accused being heard, and held that on that short ground alone the orders had to be set aside for violation of natural justice. It restored both criminal appeals to the file of the High Court, directed the parties to appear on 20 April 2026 without separate notice, requested disposal preferably within six weeks, and continued the interim protection until then.
The appeals were heard by Justice Gopal on 3 September 2026 and reserved. On 5 October 2026, at the time of dictating the judgment, the court found that the matters had neither been nominated to it nor accompanied by any office report explaining why they were listed before it when the bench that had decided them earlier was still available. Both files were sent to the Chief Justice, who nominated the bench on 12 October 2026. Fresh arguments were heard on 13 October 2026 and judgment was again reserved. Virendra Kumar appeared for the appellant, Devendra Nath Mishra for the State, and Lavlesh Kumar Sharma for the accused; at the September hearing Amit Daga, Senior Advocate, had led for the accused.
Overstepping jurisdiction, or changed circumstances?
For Hirdesh Kumar, the argument was that once the High Court has rejected bail in an appeal, the trial court ceases to have power to consider a second application by the same accused in the same case, and that granting it was overstepping jurisdiction. Counsel also pointed to the timing in Arsheel’s case: the second application was presented on 2 September 2025, the next date fixed was 3 September, bail was granted that day, and the sureties Santosh and Shakil Ahmad had already had their affidavits identified by the Oath Commissioner on 2 September, which showed, he said, that the accused was confident of being released on the very day of filing. He relied on paragraph 8 of Kalyan Chandra Sarkar and asked that the accused be taken back into custody and the trial expedited.
For the accused, counsel answered that after the High Court’s rejection in April 2025 the trial had started and two prosecution witnesses, the informant and the alleged eyewitness, had been examined; that was the fresh ground on which the second applications were filed, and the trial court decided them by detailed orders on merits after hearing the accused, the State and the informant’s counsel. The orders expressly noted that the first applications had been rejected and that the High Court had dismissed the appeals. There was no allegation of misuse of bail, tampering with evidence or non-cooperation with the investigation or the trial. An accused cannot be left without remedy after the High Court refuses bail; he may move the trial court again in changed circumstances, a position counsel supported with the Division Bench judgment of the Madhya Pradesh High Court in Dharam Singh Parihar v. State of Madhya Pradesh, Criminal Appeal No. 9530 of 2024, decided on 17 March 2025.
Two different yardsticks
Justice Gopal began from the distinction between granting bail and cancelling it, which he described as “two entirely different situations” governed by different and well-defined law. He set out the Supreme Court’s cancellation jurisprudence at length: the grounds listed in Raghubir Singh v. State of Bihar, (1986) 4 SCC 481, and Dolat Ram v. State of Haryana, (1995) 1 SCC 349, which require very cogent and overwhelming circumstances such as interference with the course of justice, evasion, abuse of the concession or a likelihood of absconding; CBI v. Subramani Gopalakrishnan, (2011) 5 SCC 296; Neeru Yadav v. State of U.P., (2014) 16 SCC 508, and Deepak Yadav v. State of U.P., (2022) 8 SCC 559, as quoted in Ankit Mishra v. State of M.P., 2025 SCC OnLine SC 809, which recognise that a superior court may also set aside a bail order that is unjustified, illegal or perverse, or that ignored relevant material or the gravity of the offence; Himanshu Sharma v. State of M.P., (2024) 4 SCC 222, which confines cancellation to misuse of liberty, breach of conditions, bail granted in ignorance of a statutory bar, or bail procured by fraud; and the 2025 decisions in Victim X v. State of Bihar, Phireram v. State of U.P. and Abhimanue v. State of Kerala, which restate the same two-track test and describe cancellation as a step that intervenes at the stage of violation. Cancellation, the court added, is a harsh step that interferes with individual liberty and is not to be resorted to lightly.
The judgment also recalled the bail-granting principles in Prasanta Kumar Sarkar v. Ashis Chatterjee, (2010) 14 SCC 496, and the Supreme Court’s repeated statements in Sanjay Chandra v. CBI, (2012) 1 SCC 40, Manoranjana Sinh v. CBI, (2017) 5 SCC 218, and Dataram Singh v. State of U.P., (2018) 3 SCC 22, that the object of bail is to secure attendance at trial, that it is neither punitive nor preventive, and that gravity alone cannot be decisive. In paragraph 23 the judgment states that where the facts are so grave as to shake the conscience of the court, or release would have an adverse impact on society, courts are not powerless to cancel bail, and describes the present matter as precisely a case of that nature. The operative findings in the next paragraph, however, go the other way.
Examining the orders of 3 September and 9 October 2025, the court found them to be detailed orders deciding the matters on merits. They took into account that the first applications had been rejected by the trial court and the prayer for bail refused by the High Court, considered the testimony of PW-1 and PW-2 as recorded, and after a detailed analysis concluded that it was a fit case for bail. Nothing had been demonstrated in the appeals to show misuse of bail, tampering with evidence or non-cooperation with the trial, even within the four corners of the judgments the court had surveyed. The preparation of Arsheel’s bail bonds and surety affidavits on the day his application was filed, and their verification by the Oath Commissioner the same day, could not be said to be an act demonstrating “any such grave issue” calling for cancellation. The trial was under way, two witnesses had been examined, and no ground for interference was made out.
Order
Criminal Appeal No. 11314 of 2025 and Criminal Appeal No. 10391 of 2025, both titled Hirdesh Kumar v. State of U.P. and another, were dismissed on 28 October 2026 as lacking merit. The bail granted to Junaid Khan alias Sheebu on 9 October 2025 and to Arsheel alias Amaan on 3 September 2025 by the Additional District and Sessions Judge and Special Judge (SC/ST Act), Mahoba, in Case Crime No. 350 of 2024 stands. The trial court was directed to ensure expeditious disposal of the trial, which is to proceed without undue adjournment to either side. Pending applications were disposed of. The judgment is marked approved for reporting.