Delhi HC refuses bail to gangster Neeraj Bawana, says right to speedy trial not a ‘free pass’ for undertrials

The court arrived at the conclusion while answering the legal question of whether the period of custody undergone itself entitles an undertrial to be released on regular bail premised on the right to speedy trial arising from Article 21 of the Constitution of India.

Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani took into account that Bawana “has committed heinous offences while he was on bail in other cases; and he has been convicted in the offences committed while on bail”.

“When there is a long list of serious criminal involvements, including convictions for offences committed while on bail in other cases, the apprehension that the petitioner suffers from recidivism cannot be dismissed as imaginary. In that view of the matter, the petitioner’s submission that he has served sentence for those crimes offers scant comfort to the court that no one else will be harmed by the petitioner if he is enlarged on bail this time…,” the order stated.

“…by his past conduct the petitioner has demonstrated that even conditions imposed while granting him bail would not dissuade him from indulging in criminality…bail is not being denied so as to inflict pre-trial punishment upon the petitioner, but in view of the petitioner’s grave criminal antecedents and demonstrable recidivistic tendencies…,” the court further stated.

Bawana was seeking bail in an August 2015 case registered at Mangolpuri police station where he and two other prisoners allegedly murdered two other inmates inside a prison van while they were being transported from Rohini court lock-up to Tihar jail by strangulating them with gamchas (towels).

“What these circumstances betray is not just the horror of a double murder committed under the watch of armed police guards, but also unashamed brazenness and menacing brutality on the part of the perpetrators of the crime. The circumstances show that the perpetrators of the crime were utterly uninhibited and intractable despite the presence of armed guards,” Justice Bhambhani noted.

Bawana, through his counsel, including senior advocate N Hariharan, had argued that his history sheet or criminal antecedents cannot be the prevailing criterion to deny him regular bail. Bawana, who has around 28 serious criminal cases against him in various jurisdictions across multiple states, relied on judicial precedents set in the Supreme Court judgments of former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and Bharat Rashtra Samithi leader K Kavitha, as well as others.

Noting that the present bail plea was not a “garden-variety bail petition”, the court recorded that Bawana’s involvement in the present case “shows exceptional brazenness, audacity and depravity on the part of the perpetrators, inasmuch as it was committed within the small and closely guarded and monitored confines of a jail van”.

The court, however, went on to express its “consternation” about the delay in conducting trial in relation to this FIR and urged the trial court to conclude the trial without any further undue delay while not setting any timeline to that effect.