Challenging Arrest & Parallelly Seeking Bail Without Adequate Disclosure Amounts To Abuse Of Process: Supreme Court
The Appeal before the Supreme Court was filed by the Senior Intelligence Officer, Directorate General of Service Tax Intelligence, challenging a judgment granting bail.
Justice Dipankar Datta, Justice Sheel Nagu, Supreme Court
The Supreme Court has deprecated the practice of pursuing parallel remedies, while keeping all judicial authorities in the dark and held that it may be a right of the accused to challenge his arrest or to approach a court seeking bail; however, such conduct of pursuing remedies parallelly without adequate disclosure amounts to abuse of the process of law.
The appeal before the Apex Court was filed by the Senior Intelligence Officer, Directorate General of Service Tax Intelligence, challenging the judgment of a Single Judge of the Karnataka High Court granting bail to Mohammed Kamran.
The Division Bench of Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Sheel Nagu held, “Respondent’s conduct in pursuing such parallel remedies, while keeping all judicial authorities in the dark, must be severely deprecated. It may be a right of the accused to challenge his arrest or to approach a court seeking bail; however, such conduct of pursuing remedies parallelly, particularly without adequate disclosure, clearly amounts to abuse of the process of law.”
Factual Background
The appellant lodged a private complaint before the Special Court for Economic Offences, Bengaluru against the respondent alleging commission of offences under Section 16(2)(b) read with Sections 132(1)(b), 132(1)(c) and 132(1)(f) of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017, punishable under Section 135. The allegation in the complaint was that the respondent, being the proprietor of M/s MK Traders, issued invoices without supply of goods, availed fraudulent input tax credit and falsified documents and furnished false information to the appellant with an intent to evade payment of tax under the CGST Act, thereby causing a loss of Rs 43,08,22,936.
It was alleged on behalf of the appellant that a search was carried out at the declared residential premises of the respondent as well as his actual residence, during which he offered stiff resistance and ultimately fled from the spot. A separate FIR came to be registered for this offence. The respondent was arrested. Successive bail applications filed by him before the trial court as well as the Additional City Civil and Sessions Judge came to be rejected. The respondent then filed the criminal petition before the High Court seeking bail. The petition was allowed by the Single Judge by granting bail to the respondent. The order granting bail became the subject matter of challenge in the appeal.
Reasoning
On a perusal of the facts of the case, the Bench held that the conduct of the respondent and the manner in which he moved the High Court for an expedited hearing of his criminal petition on December 26, 2025. “In fact, not only has he abused the process of law, he has suppressed material facts from the High Court. There is clear lack of uberimma fides, which is the foundation for invoking the equitable and discretionary jurisdiction for grant of bail”, it added.
Dealing with the issue of parallel remedies before various fora by the respondent, the Bench held, “Rejection of the prayer for bail (fourth in the series) by the Sessions Court as well as refusal by the writ court to order release from custody were particularly not brought to the notice of the High Court. The fact that the respondent engaged in forum shopping is evident.”
The Bench noted that the criminal petition before the Single Judge was listed, upon a memo having been moved by the counsel for the respondent, post December 22, 2025, during the winter vacation of the High Court. “Ideally, in view of the earlier direction, the criminal petition should have been listed upon reopening of the High Court after the winter vacation particularly when such petition had not been made returnable on a specific date falling during such vacation or the Single Judge had not directed its listing before the Vacation Bench. To have obtained listing of a petition, without adequate notice to the appellant, was clearly an attempt to steal a march by even misleading the Court ”, it added.
Thus, the Bench set aside the part of the impugned order whereby the criminal petition stood disposed of with the result that the same was to be revived on the file of the High Court. The Bench also directed that instead of the bail granted by the Single Judge, the respondent should continue to remain on interim bail on earlier terms and conditions.
Cause Title: Senior Intelligence Officer v. Mohammed Kamran (Neutral Citation: 2026 INSC 1140]