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Dinubhai Boghabhai Solanki v. State of Gujarat & Ors.

Criminal Appeal · 2017 INSC 1063Decided 30 Oct 2017
Criminal Appeal No. 492 of 2014, with connected Criminal Appeals arising out of SLP (Criminal) Nos. 4965, 5086, 5309 and 5321 of 2017, and Criminal Miscellaneous Petition No. 14006 of 2015
Justice A.K. Sikri · Justice Ashok Bhushan

Background

Dinubhai Solanki, a former Member of Parliament, was an accused (along with his nephew) in the 2010 murder of RTI activist Amit Jethwa, who had been campaigning against illegal mining near the Gir Forest Sanctuary. Solanki was granted bail by the Supreme Court in February 2014 (in this very appeal) subject to strict conditions, including not threatening or inducing witnesses. Criminal Appeal No. 492 of 2014 itself (challenging the transfer of investigation to the CBI) was already finally dismissed by the Supreme Court back in February 2014 (reported at (2014) 4 SCC 626); what this October 2017 judgment actually decides are later, connected matters that continued under the same case record: a complainant's 2015 application to cancel Solanki's bail (alleging witness-tampering), and fresh 2017 appeals challenging a Gujarat High Court order that had directed a complete de novo (fresh) retrial after 105 of 195 prosecution witnesses turned hostile, including 8 of the key eye-witnesses.

Decision Breakdown

The Court found CBI's own affidavits corroborated the complainant's allegations that witnesses had been threatened and induced to turn hostile, making out a prima facie case for cancelling bail to protect a fair trial. However, instead of ordering a complete fresh retrial of all witnesses as the High Court had directed, the Supreme Court modified that direction to require re-examination of only 26 identified witnesses (not the entire trial), and set aside a separate High Court direction for administrative action against the trial judge. On bail, the Court cancelled Solanki's existing bail and ordered him taken into custody, but only for the duration needed to re-examine the 8 key eye-witnesses on a day-to-day basis; once their evidence was recorded, he was to be released again on the earlier 2014 bail terms, with an added condition that he stay out of Gujarat until the remaining evidence was complete.

Lesson Learnt

Where there is credible evidence that an accused on bail is intimidating witnesses and derailing a fair trial, courts can cancel that bail, but the remedy will be calibrated to the actual harm (here, custody only until the directly-affected eye-witnesses are safely re-examined) rather than an open-ended or maximal response, and a full retrial order can itself be scaled back to just the tainted portion of the evidence.

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

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