1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Crl. Misc. No. 18619-M of 2009 (O&M) Date of Decision: 14.7.2009 *** Gian Singh .. Petitioner Vs. State of Punjab & Ors. .. Respondents. CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE ARVIND KUMAR, Present:- Mr. Ritesh Pandey, Advocate for the petitioner. *** ARVIND KUMAR, J. The petitioner is the complainant in a private complaint instituted before the Court wherein respondents No.2 to 4 have been summoned to face trial for the offences under Sections 323, 324, 326 read with Section 34 IPC. He is aggrieved with the orders dated 18.10.2008, 3.11.2008 and 11.12.2008 passed by the Courts below. Some events have to be noticed first. After summoning of respondents No.2 to 4, apprehending their arrest, they preferred application for anticipatory bail. Initially, they were granted interim anticipatory bail, which was made absolute by the Court of learned Sessions Judge, Gurdaspur vide order dated 18.10.2008. The operative part of the same reads as under:- “The interim order allowed to the petitioners vide order dated 29.9.2008 is hereby made absolute and a direction is given to the applicants to surrender before the Ld. Trial court and make an application for regular bail within ten days from today. The application so made shall be heard and disposed of by the ld. Trial court in accordance with law and the anticipatory bail shall, continue till expiry of one week after disposal of the application for regular bail.” 2 It emerges out from the records that the order dated 18.10.2008 was complied with and respondents No.2 to 4 preferred the application seeking their regular bail in the matter. However, their said application was rejected by the trial Magistrate vide order dated 3.11.2008 and consequently, they approached the learned Sessions Judge, who extended the benefit of regular bail to them vide order dated 11.12.2008. The very limb of the argument of learned counsel for the petitioner-complainant is that the application filed by respondents No.2 to 4 for regular bail was otherwise not maintainable because they were not in the custody, which is a condition precedent for filing the application under Section 439 Cr.P.C. In case of Sunita Devi Vs. State of Bihar 2005(1) RCR (Criminal) 410, the Hon'ble Apex Court while dealing the question when a person can be said to be in custody within the meaning of Section 439 of Cr.P.C., held in the following words:- “The crucial question is when a person is in custody, within the meaning of Section 439 of the Code? When he is in duress either because he is held by the investigating agency or other police or allied authority or is under the control of the court having been remanded by judicial order, or having offered himself to the court's jurisdiction and submitted to its orders by physical presence. No lexical dexterity nor precedential profusion is needed to come to the realistic conclusion that he who is under the control of the court or is in the physical hold to an officer with coercive power is in custody for the purpose of Section 439. The word is of elastic semantics but its core meaning is that the law has taken control of the person. The equivocatory quibblings and hide-and- seek niceties sometimes heard in court that the police have taken a man into informal custody but not arrested him, have detained him for interrogation but not taken him into formal custody and other like terminological dubieties are unfair evasions of the straightforwardness 3 of the law.” The aforesaid observations in Sunita Devi's case (supra) leaves no manner of doubt that the application for regular bail filed by respondents No.2 to 4 was very much maintainable since they were under the control of the trial court. It is not the case of the petitioner that the private respondents did not file their application for regular bail within the specified period of one week, up to which time the order granting anticipatory bail was to remain operative, in case of dismissal of application of their regular bail. In the above facts, no fault could be found with the approach of the Courts below while passing the impugned orders. The instant petition being without any merit is dismissed in limine. (ARVIND KUMAR) JUDGE July 14,2009 Jiten