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Girish Gandhi vs. The State of Uttar Pradesh

Not available · 2024 INSC 617Decided 22 Aug 2024
Not available
Justice B.R. Gavai · Justice K.V. Viswanathan

Background

The petitioner, associated with a company (White Blue Retail Pvt. Ltd.) that allegedly ran a franchise/investment scheme that defaulted on promised returns, had 13 separate FIRs filed against him across six states (Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Kerala) for cheating and criminal breach of trust. He was granted bail in all 13 cases, but each order required him to furnish separate personal bonds and sureties. Having managed to furnish sureties in only two cases, he remained in jail because he could not find enough different people willing to stand surety for the remaining eleven cases: sureties are typically close relatives or friends, and finding several people willing to take on that legal responsibility across multiple states was practically impossible for him. He approached the Supreme Court asking that the bonds and sureties already furnished in one case be treated as valid for all the others.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that while sureties are necessary to ensure an accused's presence at trial, imposing impossible or excessive surety conditions effectively defeats the very purpose of granting bail and infringes the fundamental right to personal liberty under Article 21, quoting the settled principle that "excessive bail is no bail" and citing its own precedent in Satender Kumar Antil that a condition impossible to comply with defeats the object of release. It refused to consolidate sureties across different states (since each state's proceedings needed some independent security), but ordered that within each state, a single personal bond of Rs. 50,000 and two sureties of Rs. 30,000 each would cover all FIRs pending in that state, with the same sureties permitted to stand surety across all the states. It also dropped a requirement for a "local" surety in Rajasthan, following the well-known observation of Justice Krishna Iyer in Moti Ram v. State of M.P. against the unfairness of demanding sureties from a particular locality or region.

Lesson Learnt

Courts must ensure bail conditions are actually workable in practice, not just formally granted. Where a person facing multiple prosecutions genuinely cannot find separate sureties for each case, the requirement can and should be consolidated (state-by-state at minimum) so that bail granted on paper actually translates into real liberty, consistent with Article 21.

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

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