Delhi HC Dismisses Bail After Counsel Concealed Three Earlier Rejections to Engineer Bench Transfer
Justice Girish Kathpalia dismissed a murder accused's regular bail application, finding that counsel had concealed prior rejections to secure a transfer away from the bench that had declined bail before.
The High Court of Delhi dismissed a regular bail application filed by Parvesh Mann, also known as Sagar, who faces charges of murder, common intention, and criminal conspiracy under Section 302/34/120B IPC, as well as offences under Sections 25 and 27 of the Arms Act, arising from FIR No. 359/2022 registered at PS Narela Industrial Area. Justice Girish Kathpalia, sitting singly, found that the accused's counsel had concealed three earlier bail rejections by Justice Saurabh Banerjee and had used that concealment to obtain a transfer of the present bail application to a different bench. The court characterised the conduct as a “clear case of forum shopping” and dismissed both the bail application and the accompanying criminal miscellaneous application.
The Transfer Request and What It Hid
Bail Application No. 3784/2026 was first listed before the bench of Justice Saurabh Banerjee on 10 September 2026. On that date, counsel for Parvesh Mann submitted that a revision petition was pending before Justice Kathpalia's bench and requested that the bail application also be placed before that bench. Justice Saurabh Banerjee acceded to the request, and the matter was accordingly listed before Justice Kathpalia on 16 September 2026.
When the matter came up, the Additional Public Prosecutor for the State disclosed at the outset that the accused had earlier filed three bail applications, all of which had been dismissed by Justice Saurabh Banerjee. The disclosure raised an immediate question: why had those rejections not been placed before Justice Saurabh Banerjee when the transfer request was made?
Counsel for the accused responded that what Justice Saurabh Banerjee had dismissed were only interim bail applications, not a regular bail application, and therefore the position was not as damaging as the State suggested. The court did not accept that answer.
Court's Own Research Exposes the Full Picture
At that stage, a law researcher attached to Justice Kathpalia's court retrieved the order dated 17 October 2023 passed in Bail Application No. 2959/2023. That application had been filed by the same accused, Parvesh Mann, and had been dismissed by Justice Saurabh Banerjee. The court found that Bail Application No. 2959/2023 was an application for regular bail, not interim bail.
The retrieved order directly contradicted counsel's claim that only interim applications had been dismissed. The record showed that Justice Saurabh Banerjee had, in fact, declined regular bail once and interim bail twice for this accused. With that factual position established, the court turned to what it meant for the transfer request made on 10 September 2026.
Forum Shopping: How the Court Reasoned
Justice Kathpalia found that having realised bail had been declined by Justice Saurabh Banerjee both in a regular bail application and in two interim bail applications, counsel made a request before Justice Saurabh Banerjee to transfer the present application to a different bench — and did so without disclosing any of those prior rejections.
The court held that even the interim bail dismissals, which counsel belatedly acknowledged, had been concealed from Justice Saurabh Banerjee at the time of the transfer request. The combined concealment — of one regular bail rejection and two interim rejections — was what Justice Kathpalia described as the mechanism by which the bench was misled into ordering the transfer.
The court deprecated the conduct in plain terms. Seeking a different bench by suppressing the history of adverse orders before the earlier bench is precisely what forum shopping means, and the court's oral judgment treated this as a self-evident case of it.
Outcome
Justice Girish Kathpalia dismissed Bail Application No. 3784/2026 along with the accompanying application CRL.M.A. 28070/2026 on 16 September 2026. No bail was granted. The dismissal was on the ground of forum shopping arising from the concealment of prior rejections by Justice Saurabh Banerjee.