Delhi HC Rejects Sushil Kumar's Fresh Bail Bid, Finds No Material Change After Supreme Court's Cancellation

Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav declined bail to wrestler Sushil Kumar in the 2021 Chhatrasal Stadium murder case, holding that hostile witness testimony alone does not constitute a change in circumstances after the Supreme Court cancelled his earlier bail.

The High Court of Delhi on 6 August 2026 dismissed a fresh regular bail application filed by Sushil Kumar, the decorated Olympian wrestler charged in the May 2021 Chhatrasal Stadium murder case. Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav, sitting singly, held that the claimed change in circumstances — namely, the examination and alleged hostile turn of the complainant Ashok Dhankad — was insufficient to reopen the door closed by the Supreme Court when it cancelled an earlier grant of bail in August 2025. The court also held that the standard parameters governing Section 483 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (corresponding to Section 439 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973) independently weighed against release, given the gravity of the offence, forensic material on record, and the petitioner's demonstrated capacity to influence witnesses.

The Chhatrasal Stadium Incident and the Charges

The case has its origin in the intervening night of 4th–5th May 2021. A PCR call reporting gunfire inside Chhatrasal Stadium, Delhi, brought the police to the parking area, where they found that five persons — Jai Bhagwan @ Sonu, Sagar Dhankhad, Ravinder @ Bhinda, Bhagat @ Bhagtu, and Amit @ Khagad — had been abducted from Shalimar Bagh and Model Town, Delhi, and brought to the stadium. They were assaulted with lathis, dandas, and hockey sticks. Certain accused persons were also armed with firearms. Sagar Dhankhad died from his injuries the same day during treatment, resulting in the addition of Section 302 IPC to the case.

Investigation produced a chargesheet and subsequently a supplementary chargesheet running across sections 302, 307, 308, 364, 365, 452, 323, 342, 188, 269, 147, 148, 149, 506(II), 392, 394, 411, 201, 109, 120B, 34, 174A, and 212 IPC, along with Sections 25(1)(B), 27(1), and 30 of the Arms Act, 1959, against twenty-three accused persons, of whom twenty stand arrested. The FIR was registered as FIR No. 218/2021 at Police Station Model Town (Crime Branch), Delhi. Charges were framed on 15 October 2022. At the time of the present application, the trial was at the stage of recording prosecution evidence, with 222 witnesses cited and, as the Trial Court's report disclosed, only 48 examined.

The Bail History: Grant, Cancellation, and Surrender

The petitioner had been granted interim bail by the Trial Court on three occasions during the trial: 4 November 2022, 6 March 2023, and 19 July 2023. He surrendered on each occasion without dispute. His first application for regular bail was refused by the Trial Court on 22 July 2024.

He then approached the Delhi High Court in Bail Appln. 2654/2024. A coordinate Bench allowed that application by order dated 4 March 2025, primarily on the ground that the material eyewitnesses and injured witnesses examined up to that point, including the sole witness who had identified the petitioner in examination-in-chief, had on the whole turned hostile and failed to support the prosecution. The Bench also noted that with 189 witnesses cited and only 30 examined, trial conclusion was unlikely in the near future.

Ashok Dhankad, the father of the deceased Sagar Dhankhad, challenged the bail grant. The Supreme Court, in Ashok Dhankad v. State (NCT of Delhi) & Anr. [Criminal Appeal No. 3495/2025 arising out of SLP (Crl.) No. 5370/2025], set aside the order dated 4 March 2025 by its judgment dated 13 August 2025 and directed Sushil Kumar to surrender within one week. The petitioner surrendered on 20 August 2025.

The Supreme Court's judgment drew a doctrinal distinction that forms the spine of the present order: an appeal against a bail grant tests whether the discretion under Section 439 CrPC was exercised judiciously, cautiously, and within settled parameters; an application for cancellation of bail, by contrast, examines supervening circumstances or misconduct after release. The Court applied the former standard and found the 4 March 2025 order wanting.

Why the Supreme Court Had Cancelled Bail

The Delhi High Court's order of 6 August 2026 carefully recounts what the Supreme Court had found problematic in the earlier bail grant. The coordinate Bench had failed to reckon with the petitioner's conduct in evading arrest and remaining absconding for a considerable period before eventual surrender; the gravity and shocking nature of the allegations; the recovery of a loaded firearm; forensically untampered video evidence; and, most significantly, the petitioner's societal influence as a decorated Olympian.

The Supreme Court had recorded a specific factual pattern: on each of the five occasions the petitioner was afforded temporary liberty — on 4 November 2022 (eight days), 6 March 2023 (three days), 23 July 2023 (seven days), 30 July 2023 (nine days), and 18 August 2023 (two days) — prosecution witnesses who thereafter deposed had turned hostile. The Supreme Court noted: “out of 35 witnesses, 28 have turned hostile.” While it refrained from affirming that the petitioner was directly responsible, it held that the pattern underscored the possibility of interference into the trial.

Written complaints from certain witnesses, apprehending threat to their lives at the behest of the accused, had already been placed before the court before the bail order of 4 March 2025 was passed. The Supreme Court found all this had been overlooked. In its concluding paragraph, however, it clarified that it would be open to the accused to apply afresh for bail before the appropriate court “with a change in circumstances,” to be decided on its own merits.

The Fresh Application and the Claimed Change in Circumstances

After the Trial Court dismissed a fresh bail application on 6 February 2026, the petitioner approached the Delhi High Court directly in the present Bail Appln. 744/2026. His counsel argued that the very apprehension which had weighed with the Supreme Court — that material public witnesses yet to be examined could be influenced — no longer subsisted. All injured and public witnesses from PW-1 to PW-42 had since been examined and had, without exception, declined to support the prosecution version or attribute any specific role to the petitioner.

The central plank of the submission was the examination of Ashok Dhankad himself, the complainant at whose instance the earlier bail was cancelled. According to the petitioner, Dhankad had, upon examination as a witness, not supported the prosecution. This, combined with incarceration exceeding five years and the fact that only formal and official witnesses now remained among the 222 cited, was said to constitute the requisite change in circumstances.

The State and counsel for the deceased's family opposed the application. They submitted at the threshold that the characterisation of Ashok Dhankad's testimony as unsupportive of the prosecution was itself in dispute: read as a whole, his testimony in fact corroborated the prosecution case, and this was a matter for the Trial Court to determine at the stage of final appreciation of evidence, not at an interlocutory bail hearing. They also submitted that the core concerns identified by the Supreme Court — pre-arrest conduct, gravity of the offence, corroborative forensic and video material, and the demonstrated pattern of witnesses turning hostile upon release — remained wholly unaltered.

The Trial Court's Report on Delay

By order dated 16 July 2026, Justice Kaurav directed the Trial Court to submit a report on the stage of the trial and impediments to its early conclusion. The report was received in a sealed cover on 25 July 2026. It disclosed that the trial involves twenty-three accused persons and that the cross-examination of prosecution witnesses by each of them individually was principally protracting the recording of evidence. The Presiding Officer stated that all endeavours were being made towards early conclusion. As of the date of the report, 48 of the 222 cited witnesses had been examined.

The Court's Reasoning on Change in Circumstances

Justice Kaurav framed two questions for determination. First, whether the examination of Ashok Dhankad and his alleged failure to support the prosecution amounted to a material change in circumstances justifying departure from the Supreme Court's view. Second, whether, even assuming that threshold were crossed, the petitioner was on an overall conspectus entitled to regular bail.

On the first question, the court held that the law governing successive bail applications is well settled. Citing Kalyan Chandra Sarkar v. Rajesh Ranjan [(2005) 2 SCC 42], the court reiterated that a court entertaining a subsequent bail application is under a duty to examine the grounds on which the earlier bail was rejected or cancelled and to record what fresh grounds persuade it to take a different view. The absence of such fresh grounds renders a subsequent grant unsustainable as an indirect overruling of the superior court's order. The right to move afresh, confirmed in Babu Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh [AIR 1978 SC 527], is real but conditioned upon demonstrating something genuinely new.

The foundation on which the Supreme Court had proceeded, the court observed, was not merely that particular witnesses were yet to be examined. It was the broader finding that the petitioner, a person of considerable societal standing and influence, had demonstrated on each occasion of temporary liberty a pattern of witnesses thereafter turning hostile. Whether Ashok Dhankad's deposition supported or detracted from the prosecution case was a matter of appreciation of evidence awaiting the Trial Court's final determination. It could not be treated as a change in circumstances sufficient to “unlock the door that the Supreme Court closed.”

The Court's Reasoning on Regular Bail Parameters

On the second question, the court held that even assuming the threshold of change in circumstances were met, the parameters governing regular bail continued to weigh against the petitioner. Citing Ajwar v. Waseem [(2024) 10 SCC 768], the court set out the relevant considerations: the nature of the accusation and the manner of the crime, the gravity of the offence, the role attributed to the accused, the probability of witness tampering, the likelihood of the accused being unavailable if bailed, and the overall desirability of release. These echoed the formulation in Prasanta Kumar Sarkar v. Ashis Chatterjee [(2010) 14 SCC 496], traceable to Ram Govind Upadhyay v. Sudarshan Singh [(2002) 3 SCC 598].

The court acknowledged the principle in Satender Kumar Antil v. Central Bureau of Investigation [(2022) 10 SCC 51] that bail is ordinarily the rule and jail the exception, but held that this principle operates within, not in derogation of, the factors set out above — particularly where the offence is a premeditated and gruesome assault resulting in death, corroborated by recovery of a firearm, forensically untampered video evidence, and a large body of material yet to be tested at trial.

The court declined to undertake a meticulous examination of testimony already recorded or render any finding on whether Dhankad's deposition supported or detracted from the prosecution case. That exercise, it held, belongs to the Trial Court at the stage of final adjudication. What was material for present purposes was that the specific concerns articulated by the Supreme Court — pre-arrest conduct, gravity of the offence, and above all, the petitioner's capacity to influence the trial's outcome given his standing — had not been shown to have altered in any material particular.

Outcome

Bail Appln. 744/2026 was dismissed. The court clarified that observations made in the order are confined to the disposal of the present application and shall not be construed as an expression of opinion on the merits, which shall be decided by the Trial Court on the basis of the evidence led before it. All pending applications also stood disposed of.