Restrictive clauses in stringent penal statutes cannot prevent courts from granting bail if Article 21 of the Constitution has been infringed, the Supreme Court said on Thursday in a case under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, Bar and Bench reported.
Article 21 pertains to the protection of life and personal liberty.
A bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and Ujjal Bhuyan made the observation while granting bail to a man Sheikh Javed Iqbal from Nepal who has been accused of being involved in illegal trade of counterfeit Indian currency notes, PTI reported.
Iqbal was arrested in 2015 by the anti-terrorist squad near the Sonauli border between India and Nepal based on allegations that he was found with fake Indian currency notes totalling to around Rs 23 lakh to Rs 26 lakh, Bar and Bench reported.
Iqbal was subsequently charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.
In the Supreme Court on Thursday, Iqbal’s counsel submitted that he had been in jail for more than eight years and that there was no possibility of the criminal trial concluding in the near future, PTI reported.
However, the Uttar Pradesh government, represented by Additional Advocate General Garima Prasad, said that the charges against Iqbal were serious and claimed that the accused was a flight risk as he is a foreign citizen.
The court, while pronouncing its decision to grant him bail, said that the right to life and personal liberty enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution was “overarching and sacrosanct”, Bar and Bench reported.
It added: “A constitutional court cannot be restrained from granting bail to an accused on account of restrictive statutory provisions in a penal statute if it finds that the right of the accused-undertrial under Article 21 of the Constitution of India has been infringed.”
The bench said that a court must lean in favour of “constitutionalism and the rule of law, of which liberty is an intrinsic part”, when interpreting a stringent penal statute.
“It would be very wrong to say that under a particular statute, bail cannot be granted,” the court said. “It would run counter to the very grain of our constitutional jurisprudence.”
In 2016, Iqbal’s first application seeking bail was rejected by a sessions court in Lucknow, Bar and Bench reported. He then moved the Allahabad High Court.
In 2021, the High Court set aside certain proceedings initiated against him under the anti-terrorism law on the grounds that the required sanctions were not obtained.
However, the anti-terrorist squad challenged this order before the Supreme Court. The top court stayed the order but was yet to pronounce its final judgement in the matter.
In the interim, Iqbal told the High Court that the criminal trial was unlikely to conclude any time soon and urged it grant him bail, Bar and Bench reported.
In 2023, his petition for bail was rejected by the High Court on the grounds that he was from Nepal and may not attend the proceedings if he was released from jail.
Iqbal subsequently challenged this in the Supreme Court.
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