Charged on 1 August, bailed on 29 September: Bombay HC sets aside Sachin Waze bail in UAPA case

A division bench of Justice G. S. Kulkarni and Justice Neela Gokhale allowed the NIA appeal against the Special Judge order in the Antilia explosives-car and Mansukh Hiran murder case, holding that the Special Judge ignored the Section 43D(5) test and that five years in custody was no ground for bail.

A Special Judge framed terror charges against former Mumbai police officer Sachin Waze on 1 August 2026 and granted him bail on 29 September. On 5 November the Bombay High Court set the bail order aside, saying the judge had ignored the settled tests for bail under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and misread an earlier High Court order.

Justice G. S. Kulkarni and Justice Neela Gokhale, sitting as a division bench, allowed the National Investigation Agency’s appeal under Section 21 of the NIA Act. Waze is the first accused in the case over an explosives-laden Scorpio left near the Ambani family’s residence and the murder of the vehicle’s owner, Mansukh Hiran.

The bench held that the material in the charge-sheet gave reasonable grounds to believe the accusation was prima facie true, so the statutory bar on bail applied. It also found that the risk to the trial from his position and clout counted against release.

The Scorpio, the note and a murder

On 25 February 2021 a Mahindra Scorpio carrying 20 gelatin sticks and a threat note naming the Ambani family was found on Carmichael Road, Mumbai, near the family’s residence. Its number plate was fake and belonged to a Range Rover registered to Reliance Industries and deployed in a security convoy.

Gamdevi police registered FIR No. 35 of 2021. The Scorpio’s real number led to its owner, Mansukh Hiran, who had reported it stolen at Vikhroli police station on 18 February 2021. Both cases went to the Crime Intelligence Unit of the Mumbai Crime Branch, where Waze, then an Assistant Police Inspector, was made investigating officer.

On 4 March 2021 Hiran left home to meet a police officer and did not return. His body was found the next day in Retibunder Creek.

The state ATS registered a murder case on 7 March, and the Ministry of Home Affairs had NIA take over all three cases by orders of 8, 20 and 21 March. NIA arrested Waze on 13 March 2021.

Waze is being tried in Special Case No. 1090 of 2021 under Sections 120-B, 201, 302, 364 and 403 of the Indian Penal Code, Section 25 of the Arms Act and Sections 16, 18 and 20 of the UAPA. The first charge-sheet, against ten accused, was filed on 3 September 2021.

The case NIA says it can prove

NIA alleges that Waze kept Hiran’s Scorpio from November 2020, had him file a false theft complaint, procured fake number plates, planted the gelatin sticks and note, and parked the vehicle near the residence. It says a Telegram post in the name of Jaish-ul-Hind claimed the act, and another post from the same group denied it.

The agency says Hiran was pressed to take the blame, refused, and was killed as a weak link. It also alleges that Waze dumped CCTV recorders in the Mithi River and destroyed evidence tied to Hiran’s phone. His aim, NIA says, was money and a return to glory as a supercop.

Years of bail fights before the order

Waze’s default bail plea was rejected on 22 October 2021. On 16 September 2023 the Special Judge rejected his regular bail plea on merits, finding material that he had used the Scorpio from November 2020 to 5 February 2021, and noting the confession of Accused No. 9, Manish Soni.

He appealed 778 days late. His habeas corpus petition, Writ Petition No. 2485 of 2024, was dismissed on 6 March 2026. A supplementary charge-sheet came on 29 May 2026, and his discharge application was rejected on 15 July 2026.

On 7 August 2026 another division bench closed his delayed appeal as infructuous, since the investigation was complete and charges had been framed on 1 August. It left a question of law open, allowed him to apply afresh for bail, and told the trial court to decide on merit without being influenced by its 2023 findings.

The order that freed him

The Special Judge granted bail on 29 September in a short order. The High Court listed his reasons. There was no material of any demand for money, and the prosecution had not said whose mind was meant to be terrorised or recorded any statement from the Ambani family.

He also held that gelatin sticks without detonator or fuse were useless, that economic security came into Section 15 of the UAPA only through counterfeit currency, and that Hiran’s murder was not the outcome of a terrorist act. He gave parity with Accused Nos. 5 and 10, who were on bail.

On charges, the Special Judge said he had framed them without testing the credibility of the material, and the same material was not enough to refuse bail. He also wrote that, at the threshold, he would have turned down the plea outright.

NIA: the bar cannot be softer at bail

Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh argued for NIA that Section 43D(5) bars bail to a person accused under Chapters IV and VI if the court finds the accusation prima facie true on the case diary and charge-sheet. The satisfaction needed, he said, is lighter than for framing charges.

The Special Judge had turned that around, he said, by calling the bail test higher. A murder committed to protect the conspiracy could not be called independent of it, and Sections 16(1)(b), 18 and 20 and Section 364 of the IPC all carry life imprisonment. Five years in custody did not answer the question.

On the terror charge, he argued that the limbs of Section 15 are alternatives and that a vehicle with explosives on a public road was likely to strike terror. A demand for money and statements of the targeted family are not ingredients of the offence.

Under Section 18, he said, the actual commission of a terrorist act need not be shown, a point he drew from Union of India v. Barakathullah. He also said the Special Judge had virtually discounted Accused No. 9’s confession as retracted, although no retraction application had been filed.

On delay, he said the accused’s own bail and discharge applications had slowed the case. Parity was not mechanical, since Accused No. 10 was only said to have engaged the assailants. Waze had worked in the unit that investigated these FIRs, and many witnesses were police officers who had worked with or under him.

Waze: five years and no terror

Mr V. M. Thorat, for Waze, argued that the main ground was prolonged incarceration and that none of the Section 15 ingredients was met even on NIA’s case. At most, he said, the motive was to look like a supercop, which was not terror. Gelatin sticks without a detonator or fuse caused no terror.

He argued that killing Hiran to stop him deposing against Waze was not a terrorist act, and that rejection of the discharge application did not bar bail. The delay in starting trial was not Waze’s doing, he said.

Accused Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10 were on bail, he added, and Waze was on bail in the other cases against him, including the Khwaja Yunus murder case and extortion cases. There was no history of tampering with witnesses.

The test the bench applied

The bench began with the purpose of the UAPA, which is to prevent unlawful activities and deal with terrorist acts. On the prosecution case, it said, ingredients of a terrorist act appear evident, including an act meant to threaten economic security and strike terror, aimed at a prominent industrialist family.

Planting explosives with a threat note in the name of Jaish-ul-Hind, the court said, would be enough to attract Sections 15 and 16. It then set out the law, relying on Watali, Vernon, Gurwinder Singh, Tasleem Ahmed, Syed Iftikhar Andrabi, Barakathullah and Gulfisha Fatima.

From Watali it took the standard that material gathered by the investigating agency must prevail unless contradicted, and that the satisfaction required is lighter than at the stage of framing charges. The court looks at the totality of material, and does not weigh evidence in detail.

It noted Gulfisha Fatima on the accused-specific nature of the inquiry, and Barakathullah on Section 18. It also set out Andrabi, in which the Supreme Court said bail is the rule even under the UAPA, and Tasleem Ahmed, which referred the Najeeb question on delay to a larger bench.

The Special Judge, the bench said, had applied none of these parameters. It added that a court hearing a successive bail plea must consider why earlier pleas were rejected, as the Supreme Court held in Prasad Shrikant Purohit v. State of Maharashtra.

A tone the bench could not accept

The bench said it was constrained to express profound concern at the casual manner in which the Special Judge handled the bail application. It described several of his remarks as having no rationale or relevance and as sounding strange, even abnormal, for judicial reasoning.

The Special Judge had said he was keeping the order to two or three pages and called his decision agile. The High Court said it could not tell what he meant by such remarks, and called his statement that he would have refused bail at the threshold a very odd approach to a case of this seriousness.

What the record showed

The bench said the Special Judge should have engaged with the grounds on which bail had been refused in 2023, and the earlier order had rejected the same arguments. It then went through the material it was shown, including a statement produced in a sealed cover.

A key witness, KW-1, said that on Waze’s directions he swapped the Scorpio’s plates for those of an Innova also in Waze’s control. In his statement to a magistrate he said that around 2.10 am on 25 February 2021 he followed Waze, who drove the Scorpio slowly down Carmichael Road and parked it.

Waze, he said, sat in the Scorpio for about five minutes and then walked to the Innova carrying a black sack. He said Waze gave him a packet of money to keep quiet.

Other witnesses spoke of Waze arranging a false theft complaint through an advocate and demanding two number plates at a car showroom. A travel-agency employee said he booked an Oberoi hotel room for 100 nights, through a friend, in the name of a person NIA says does not exist, on an Aadhaar card bearing his photograph.

A police constable said a blue sack he was told to keep in Waze’s Innova on 16 February 2021 was later found in the Scorpio. Another officer said CCTV recorders and CPUs collected without formalities were thrown into the Mithi River on 8 March 2021. The material was recovered after Waze’s disclosure statement.

Statements from Hiran’s family said Waze pressed him to get himself arrested in the Scorpio case and promised release in four or five days. A lawyer advised Hiran against it.

A call from an officer named Tawde took him out on 4 March, and the family never saw him again. They said Waze pretended not to know where he was.

A plot like something from a film

The bench found strong prima facie material linking Waze to the offences. He had been suspended for 16 years, from March 2004 to June 2020, and was eager to redeem himself as a supercop. He appeared to have set up Hiran’s car as stolen, swapped its plates, filled it with explosives and left a threat note.

Once the car was found, the court said, material showed Waze portrayed it as the work of a terror group by a Telegram post. The group quickly disowned it. Using the name of a terror outfit showed intent to create terror and a bomb scare, after which the supercop would step in to protect rich industrialists and slowly extort money.

The scheme sounded like something from the screen, the bench said, but its consequences were serious crimes. An Assistant Police Inspector had used unsuspecting junior officers, owned luxury cars and got investigations assigned to himself. His clout in the police machinery, it said, could not be undermined.

The bench added that his proximity to powerful people, the free run he allegedly had in an extortion racket against hoteliers and bar owners, and the pressure on Hiran followed by his murder showed capacity and propensity to influence witnesses and tamper with evidence. He was also on bail in another case when the alleged offences took place.

Why five years in custody did not count

The bench rejected the plea of delay and prolonged custody. The material showed a clear role with a direct nexus to the unlawful activity, so the prosecution material crossed the threshold. It held that:

“the statutory embargo prescribed under Section 43D(5) operates with full force.” (para 40)

Once the threshold is crossed, the appropriate response is to expedite the trial, not to grant bail in disregard of the statute. The offence carries life imprisonment, and five years in custody could not be called long in these facts.

The bench relied on Kalyan Chandra Sarkar v. Rajesh Ranjan for the view that custody and a slow trial do not by themselves entitle an accused to bail when the offence is grave. It also cited State of Karnataka v. Sri Darshan and Netsity Systems v. State (NCT of Delhi).

Prolonged incarceration, the court added, could not be the sole consideration in this case, and the trial was set to commence. Liberty under Article 21 had to be viewed in the wider context of serious UAPA accusations.

The charge-versus-bail finding

The bench held that the Special Judge had given the settled bail parameters a complete go-bye and examined none of the criteria. It called his finding that framing charges needs a lesser degree of satisfaction than bail “absolute legal perversity” (para 45).

That was even more so, the bench said, because the same judge had found prima facie substance in the accusations when he framed charges that included UAPA offences. As the court extracted Watali, the satisfaction needed for bail is lighter than for framing charges.

The bench also rejected the idea that the 7 August order showed the High Court saw merit in the bail case. That order had directed that the application be decided on merits, in accordance with law. Reading it as a licence to ignore the material was, the bench said, an egregiously flawed approach.

Position, clout and the public interest

The bench concluded that the report under Section 173 of the Code of Criminal Procedure contained substantial inculpatory material. That material, it held, overwhelmingly gave reasonable grounds to believe that the accusations against Waze were prima facie true.

His position and affluence also made it likely that bail would hurt the trial. That included a reasonable apprehension that witnesses or evidence would be tampered with, and other considerations the bench said were writ large on the record.

The court said prima facie his aim was to threaten the security and economic security of India, with intent to strike terror. It called the case one where a person in uniform, supposed to protect citizens, had indulged in such activity, and said granting bail would be against the larger public interest.

Order

The High Court quashed and set aside the Special Judge’s order of 29 September 2026 on Waze’s bail application (Exhibit 601) in Special Case No. 1090 of 2021.

The NIA’s Criminal Appeal No. 850 of 2026 was allowed. Interim Application No. 3559 of 2026, which was not pressed, was disposed of. The judgment was reserved on 16 October 2026 and pronounced on 5 November 2026.