Savitri Agarwal & Ors vs State Of Maharashtra & Anr

3.Material facts, leading to the filing of these appeals, are as follows:

4.On 8th December, 2007, father of Laxmi lodged a complaint with Police Station City Kotwali, Amravati against the appellants, inter alia, alleging that after the marriage of his daughter on 26th January, 2006, the appellants were torturing her for not meeting dowry demand of Rs.2 lakhs and earlier on 15th July, 2006, due to torture she had left the matrimonial home, intending to commit suicide but due to intervention of the relatives, she returned back to Amravati. On the said complaint, the police registered an FIR against the appellants for offences under Section 498A read with Section 34, IPC and Sections 3 and 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961.

- Laxmi, statements of the complainant and witnesses and after perusing the case diary, the learned Sessions Judge confirmed the anticipatory bail granted to the appellants.

6.Aggrieved, the State of Maharashtra and the complainant filed petitions before the High Court for cancellation of anticipatory bail granted to the appellants. As noted earlier, by the impugned order, the High Court has cancelled the anticipatory bail granted to the appellants, on the ground that the Sessions Judge had failed to apply his mind to certain vital circumstances viz. - absence of mention of lantern and match stick in the panchnama; necessity of lantern and its lighting at 4 p.m. in the afternoon when the house was equipped with an inverter; the daughter-in-law doing such risky work with one 5 year old child, particularly when elders in the family were present in the house and had everything been well in the house, there was no occasion for the parents of the deceased to implicate her in-laws. Inter alia, observing that the evidence, which directly involved the appellants, had been ignored, rendering the order passed by the Sessions Judge perverse, as noted above, the High Court has set aside the said order. The High Court has also noted that the offences complained of, being of serious nature, there was no ground to grant anticipatory bail to the appellants. Being aggrieved, the appellants are before us in these appeals.

ix) Though it is not necessary that the operation of an order passed under Section 438(1) of the Code be limited in point of time but the Court may, if there are reasons for doing so, limit the operation of the order to a short period until after the filing of FIR in respect of the matter covered by the order. The applicant may, in such cases, be directed to obtain an order of bail under Section 437 or 439 of the Code within a reasonable short period after the filing of the FIR.

(Emphasis Supplied)

22. For the foregoing reasons, in our judgment, the impugned order setting aside the anticipatory bail granted to the appellants by the learned Additional Sessions Judge, cannot be sustained. Accordingly, the appeals are allowed; impugned order is set aside and the order dated 18th December, 2007 passed by the Additional Sessions Judge confirming the ad-interim anticipatory bail to the appellants, is restored. It goes without saying that nothing said by the High Court or by us hereinabove shall be construed as expression of any opinion on the merits of the case.

23. Both the appeals stand disposed of, accordingly.

JULY 10, 2009.