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Prasad Shrikant Purohit v. State of Maharashtra & Anr.

Criminal Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Criminal Appeal Nos. 1969-1970 of 2010)Decided 15 Apr 2015
Criminal Appeal Nos. 1969-1970 of 2010
Justice F.M. Ibrahim Kalifulla · Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre

Background

Lt. Col. Prasad Shrikant Purohit and several co-accused were charged under MCOCA in connection with the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast, with the prosecution relying on two earlier, allegedly connected bomb-blast cases (Parbhani, 2003, and Jalna, 2004) to establish a "continuing unlawful activity" by an organised crime syndicate. The Special Judge had earlier discharged the MCOCA charges, but the Bombay High Court's Division Bench reversed that order and sent the bail applications back for fresh consideration. The appellants challenged the High Court's reasoning, principally that "cognizance" under MCOCA's definition of continuing unlawful activity attaches to the offence, not the specific offender, and separately challenged later orders rejecting their bail.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court upheld the Division Bench's view that cognizance for the purpose of Section 2(1)(d) of MCOCA is taken of the offence, not of the offender, rejecting the appellants' argument that the Parbhani and Jalna cases could not count against them individually. On that basis, Criminal Appeal Nos.1969-70 of 2010 (Purohit's challenge), 1971/2010, 1994-98/2010, the appeal from SLP(Crl.) No.8132/2010, and Criminal Appeal No.58/2011 were all dismissed. However, on the separate question of bail, the Court found enough doubt about whether the enhanced MCOCA threshold under Section 21(4)(b) was actually satisfied, and so set aside the bail-rejection orders in the appeals from SLP(Crl.) Nos.9370-71/2011, remitting those bail applications to the Special Judge for fresh consideration on merits without expressing a final view. Two unrelated SLPs concerning NIA's custody request (SLP(Crl.) Nos.9303/2011 and 9369/2011) were delinked for separate, later hearing since they had not been argued.

Lesson Learnt

Under special statutes like MCOCA, the requirement that an accused be linked to a "continuing unlawful activity" through prior cases is assessed offence-by-offence, not person-by-person: an accused can be roped in through a syndicate's pattern of offences even without being personally named in every earlier case; separately, even where a charge is upheld in principle, a court can still direct that bail be reconsidered independently if the threshold for the special bail bar is doubtful.

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

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