Madhya Pradesh High Court: Vishnu Pratap Singh Chauhan, J. while allowing the appeal set aside the order passed by the Trial Court.
The present appeal was filed against the order of the Special Judge under Section 14-A(2) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 for dismissing the bail application filed by the appellant under Section 439 CrPC.
The appellant was in jail for commission of offence punishable under Sections 341, 354, 354-B and 323 IPC, under Sections 7 and 8 of the POCSO Act and under Section 3(1)(w) & 3(2) (v-a) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
The prosecution had submitted that on 28-01-2019 appellant appeared when prosecutrix went to answer call of nature, tried to drag her to some other place by holding her hand. On resisting this appellant started assaulting her by fisticuffs.
Counsel for the Respondent/State, S.B. Agnihotri had vehemently opposed this bail application.
The Court after going through the case diary noticed that prosecutrix at the time of the incident was more than 17 years. Moreover, the investigation is already over and the charge-sheet had been filed and the trial will take considerable time. Therefore, after considering facts and circumstances of the case, the Court observed that Trial Court erred in dismissing the application filed by the appellant under Section 439 CrPC. [Gulab Pal v. State of Madhya Pradesh, 2019 SCC OnLine MP 3677, decided on 13-11-2019]
