Kanchan Kumari vs The State of Bihar & Anr.
Background
A second respondent had applied to the Patna High Court for anticipatory bail in a criminal case involving allegations of cheating and forgery (Sections 406, 420, 467, 468 IPC). While granting that bail application, the High Court also passed a direction to the Senior Superintendent of a Post Office to cancel the agency licence of the appellant, Kanchan Kumari, and bar her from working as a Post Office agent anywhere in Bihar or elsewhere. The appellant, however, was not even a party to the bail proceedings, was never issued a show-cause notice, and had no opportunity to be heard before this career-ending direction was passed against her. She approached the Supreme Court challenging only this direction.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that a court hearing an anticipatory bail application under Section 438 CrPC must confine itself strictly to whether the applicant before it has made out a case for anticipatory bail, and cannot issue peremptory directions affecting the civil rights and livelihood of a third party who is not even before the court and was given no notice or opportunity to be heard. Relying on the principle from Sumit Mehta v. State (NCT of Delhi) that any conditions imposed in bail proceedings must be relevant to the scope of that lis, the Court found the High Court's direction blacklisting the appellant from her livelihood, without notice, to be clearly unjustified and beyond the scope of the bail application. The appeal was allowed to the extent of vacating that specific direction.
Lesson Learnt
Courts deciding a bail application cannot use that occasion to pass orders harming the rights or livelihood of people who are not parties to the case and were never heard: natural justice requires that adverse orders be preceded by notice and an opportunity to be heard, and orders passed without this can be struck down even by a person who was a total stranger to the original proceeding.