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Gautam Navlakha v. National Investigation Agency

Criminal Appeal · 2021 INSC 295Decided 12 May 2021
Criminal Appeal No. 510 of 2021
Justice Uday Umesh Lalit · Justice K.M. Joseph

Background

Gautam Navlakha, an accused in the Bhima Koregaon case investigated under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, was arrested from his Delhi home in 2018. Before he could be transferred to Maharashtra, the Delhi High Court ordered that he not be moved and he was effectively kept under house arrest for a period. He later argued that this period of house arrest should count as "custody" under Section 167 of the CrPC, which would have entitled him to mandatory ("default") bail because the investigation was not completed within the statutory time limit.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that while house arrest can, in principle, qualify as custody under Section 167 CrPC, it only does so when a court has specifically and consciously ordered it as such. In Navlakha's case, the house arrest arose from an ad hoc protective order of the High Court rather than a considered order treating it as Section 167 custody, so that period could not be counted towards his claim for default bail. The Court went on to lay down guiding criteria, such as the accused's age, health, and the nature of the offence, for when courts may order house arrest as a recognized form of custody in future cases, but on the facts before it, dismissed Navlakha's appeal.

Lesson Learnt

House arrest is not automatically the same as police or judicial custody for the purpose of claiming default bail: it only counts if a court has clearly ordered it as custody under Section 167 CrPC at the time, not when it results from a separate protective order.

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

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