Four years in custody on a murder charge, and a trial with no end in sight

Justice Milind N. Jadhav released two brothers on bail in a 2021 murder case, holding that the ignominy of a trial that will not conclude in the foreseeable future is itself a ground, without any opinion on the merits.

Two brothers have been in prison since 2021 awaiting trial on a charge of murder. Justice Milind N. Jadhav has released them on bail, on a ground that says nothing about whether they did it: more than four years have gone, and there is no prospect of the trial finishing in the foreseeable future.

The case against them

The application was made under Section 483 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, which is the bail provision that has replaced Section 439 of the old Code. It arises out of Crime No. 360 of 2021 registered at Taloja Police Station, for offences punishable under Sections 302, 324, 323, 504 and 506 read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code — murder, voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons, voluntarily causing hurt, intentional insult and criminal intimidation, all with the common intention provision attached.

Three people were accused. One of them, Accused No. 2, was already released on bail by this Court in 2024, so the applicants were asking for a position their co-accused has held for two years.

The state of the trial is the fact that decides the application. Witnesses have been examined. After that there has been a hiatus, and the trial has stalled. The judgment puts it bluntly: the prospect of the trial being completed and concluded in the near future is bleak.

There is a second factual strand particular to the first applicant. He is suffering from acute psychosis, and has been for more than a year. That was not asserted from the bar — it was gathered prima facie from the Taloja Central Prison Hospital outpatient case papers and the Prisoners Health Report, both placed before the Court.

Justice Jadhav recorded prima facie observations on the material, but was explicit about their limits, and the order carries that limitation into its operative part.

The ground that carried it

What the applicants relied on was not the strength of the prosecution case but the length of their detention. They have been incarcerated for more than four years.

The judgment sets that against a line of authority on bail as a question of liberty rather than of guilt. It goes back to Gudikanti Narasimhulu v. Public Prosecutor, where Krishna Iyer J. put the issue as one of liberty, justice, public safety and the burden of the public treasury together, and said that the personal liberty of an accused or a convict is fundamental, suffering lawful eclipse only in terms of procedure established by law — the last four words of Article 21 being, in his phrase, the life of that human right. It takes in Gurcharan Singh v. State (Delhi Administration) on the same footing.

Then it collects the cases where custody of roughly this length has produced bail in murder matters. In Balwinder Singh v. State of Punjab the Supreme Court granted bail to an accused charged under Sections 302 and 307 who had spent four years in custody, citing the unlikelihood of the trial concluding in the near future and parity with a co-accused. In Roland Victor Monterio v. State of Maharashtra this Court granted bail after four years in a case under Sections 302, 304-B and 498-A. In Naresh Harishchandra Mali v. State of Maharashtra it did so after more than five years in a case under Sections 302 and 307. And in Raghvendr Singh v. State of NCT of Delhi the Delhi High Court released a man indicted for murder who had been inside for five and a half years.

Read together, those cases do not treat a fixed period as automatically sufficient. What they treat as significant is the combination — years already served, and nothing on the record to suggest the trial will end soon. Here both applicants have been in custody for more than four years and ten months, and one of their co-accused has been out since 2024.

Who runs a prosecution

The order also reproduces a passage from Sandeep Kumar Bafna v. State of Maharashtra on a question that often sits underneath a stalled trial: who is actually conducting it.

The Supreme Court held there that no vested right is granted to a complainant, an informant or an aggrieved party to conduct a prosecution directly. A Magistrate has comparative latitude, but must bear in mind that while a prosecution should remain robust, comprehensive and effective, it cannot abandon the need to be free, fair and diligent. In the Sessions Court the position is firmer still: it is the Public Prosecutor who must at all times remain in control of the prosecution, and counsel for a private party can only assist the Public Prosecutor in discharging that responsibility. The complainant or aggrieved party may be heard at a crucial and critical juncture of the trial, so that their interest in it is not prejudiced.

Order

Justice Jadhav held that the ignominy of the trial not concluding in the near foreseeable future is apparent, and that on the ground of long incarceration the applicants had made out a case for bail. Both are to be released immediately from prison in connection with Crime No. 360 of 2021, on bail and on the conditions set out in the order.

The order ends by insulating the trial from everything in it. The trial is to be adjudicated on the strength of the evidence led and strictly on its own merits, uninfluenced by any of the prima facie observations made in the bail order. The application was allowed and disposed of in those terms.