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Central Bureau of Investigation vs. Vikas Mishra @ Vikash Mishra

Criminal Appeal · 2023 INSC 345Decided 10 Apr 2023
Criminal Appeal No. 957 of 2023
M.R. Shah · C.T. Ravikumar

Background

The CBI had registered a case against officials of Eastern Coalfield Limited, CISF, Railways and others for corruption-related offences. The respondent, Vikas Mishra, was arrested and granted seven days' police custody, but got himself hospitalised during that period and then secured interim bail before the CBI could fully interrogate him in custody. When his interim bail was later cancelled by the Special Court for non-cooperation with the investigation, he was re-arrested and sent to judicial custody. The Calcutta High Court subsequently ordered his release on statutory/default bail because the chargesheet was not filed within 90 days of his re-arrest, and the CBI appealed to the Supreme Court, also seeking to complete the unused portion of his police custody interrogation.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court focused on the CBI's request to exercise the remaining police custody interrogation that it had been unable to use because the accused got hospitalised and then obtained interim bail before the original seven-day custody period ended. The Court held that an accused cannot be permitted to frustrate the investigative process or the court's own orders through such conduct, and that the right to custodial interrogation is an important right of the investigating agency. It questioned whether the rule in CBI v. Anupam J. Kulkarni (barring police custody beyond the first 15 days from arrest) needed reconsideration in situations like this, though it did not formally overrule it. On the facts, since the CBI had only managed about two and a half days of the seven days of sanctioned custody, the Court allowed the CBI's appeal to the extent of granting four additional days of police custody remand of the accused.

Lesson Learnt

An accused cannot use hospitalisation or interim bail to run out the clock on a validly granted police custody order. Courts will look at whether custody time was genuinely exercised, and may permit an investigating agency to recover an unused portion of custodial interrogation where the process was frustrated by the accused's own conduct.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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