Court No. - 50
Case :- CRIMINAL APPEAL No. - 702 of 2018 Appellant :- Surendra Pal Respondent :- State Of U.P. And Another Counsel for Appellant :- Suresh Dhar Dwivedi Counsel for Respondent :- G.A.
Hon'ble Ravindra Nath Kakkar,J.
This criminal appeal under Section 14-A (2) Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act has been preferred by the appellant with the prayer to set aside the bail rejection order dated 14.12.2017 passed by Special Judge POCSO Act/Additional Sessions Judge, Shahjahanpur.
Since documents annexed with the memo of appeal (certified copies of lower Court bail record ) and the documents (instruction and case diary) available with the learned A.G.A. are sufficient to decide the appeal, the Court is proceeding to decide the same.
Heard learned counsel for the appellant as well as learned AGA for the State and perused the entire record.
It is submitted by learned counsel for the appellant that the appellant is absolutely innocent and he has been falsely implicated in this case due to previous enmity. It is next submitted that appellant is not named in the F.I.R. It is next submitted that name of the appellant has come into light after two days of the incident in the statement of witnesses Rampal and Mahipal. It is next submitted that this is a case of circumstantial evidence and there is no direct evidence against the appellant. The Court below while passing the impugned order did not take into account the facts and evidence available on record in right prospective and erred in passing the same. It is next submitted that appellant is languishing in jail since 20.10.2017 and he has no previous criminal antecedents. It is lastly submitted that the impugned order rejecting the bail application of the appellant suffers from infirmity and illegally warranting interference by this Court.
On the other hand, learned A.G.A. opposed the prayer for bail and submitted that specific allegation of rape and murder of daughter of respondent no. 2 has been assigned to the appellant and no ground for bail is made out. It is next submitted that appellant has committed the present offence having knowledge that the victim belonged to scheduled caste community. From the evidence available on record, a prima-facie case is made out against the appellant. There is no infirmity or illegality in the impugned order.
I have considered the rival submissions made by learned counsel for the parties and have gone through the entire record including the impugned order carefully.
Having regard to the facts and circumstances of the case and keeping in view the nature of offence, evidence, complicity of the accused, gravity and severity of the offence and conduct of the applicant-accused, the Court is of the opinion that the appellant has not made out a case for bail. The Court below has rightly rejected the bail application. The impugned order does not suffer from any infirmity and illegality and the same is liable to be upheld and the appeal is liable to be dismissed.
Accordingly, the appeal is dismissed and the impugned order rejecting the bail application of the appellant is upheld.
However, learned A.G.A. brought this fact to the notice of the Court that trial is under progress.
Considering the facts and circumstances, the court below is directed to expedite the trial and all endeavours be made to conclude the trial expeditiously if possible within six months after receipt of the certified copy of this order without granting unnecessary adjournment to either of the parties.
Order Date :- 29.10.2018 AKT