Tripura High Court
Smt. Satabdi Roy Chowdhury On Behalf Of ... vs The State Of Tripura ----Respondent(S) on 26 March, 2021
Author: Arindam Lodh
Bench: Arindam Lodh
HIGH COURT OF TRIPURA
AGARTALA
B.A. 21/2021
Smt. Satabdi Roy Chowdhury on behalf of accd. Sujit Chowdhury @ Babai
and others
----Petitioner(s)
Versus
The State of Tripura ----Respondent(s)
For Petitioner(s) : Mr. P. Majumder, Advocate
For Respondent(s) : Mr. Ratan Datta, PP
Mr. S. Kar Bhowmik, Sr. Advocate
Mr. J. Das, Advocate
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE ARINDAM LODH
Order
26/03/2021
Heard Mr. P. Majumder, learned counsel appearing for the petitioner as well as Mr. Ratan Datta, learned PP and Mr. S. Kar Bhowmik, learned senior counsel assisted by Mr. J. Das, learned counsel appearing for the State-respondent.
This is an application filed under section 439 Code of Criminal Procedure for granting bail of the accused-persons in connection with Sessions Trial case No. S.T. (T-1) 103 of 2019 under Sections 307/326/34 of the Indian Penal Code and subsequently added Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, wherein the accused-person no. 1 was arrested on 04.08.2019 and the accused-persons no. 2 and 3 were arrested on 06.08.2019 and since then they are j/c for 598 days and 596 days respectively. All the accused-persons had applied for bail before this court on earlier occasions. This court considering the nature of the case had rejected all those bail applications observing that the accused-persons are very much influential in the State of Tripura as well as in Agartala city. Charge sheet has been filed and trial has commenced.
In response to a bail application, this court had directed the learned trial court to complete the trial within a period of 3 months. Admittedly, 17 witnesses have already been examined.
Mr. P. Majumder, learned counsel has submitted that since 17 witnesses have already been examined including two eye-witnesses, the accused- persons may be released on bail.
Controverting the said submission of learned counsel for the petitioner, Mr. Ratan Datta, learned PP and Mr. S Kar Bhowmik, learned Special PP have submitted that the accused-persons are very influential and they have already influenced one eye witness, namely, Sri Basu Kar, who had been turned hostile as he was found to be totally deviated from his earlier statement. They have further submitted that the accused-persons through their men and agents also had tried to influence another eye witness, PW-2, Sri Kishore Kumar Pal and in the open Court he told that the accused- persons through their lawyers had tried to influence him by offering huge amount of money. It is submitted that already one FIR has been registered with West Agartala police station against three persons including two Advocates. Learned Special PP has also submitted that call details have been collected and the State Forensic Science Laboratory has confirmed the call details regarding communication exchanged between PW-2 and those persons on behalf of the accused. They have further submitted that another witness, namely, Rabiul Alam, a TSR personnel under Tripura State Rifles, Government of Tripura has also been influenced as he was found during his cross examination that he had partly resiled from his earlier statement. Till now there were altogether 47 witness and only 17 witnesses as of now have been examined and 30 witnesses are yet to be examined amongst whom there are many public witnesses. Based on those aforesaid facts, the State Counsel have strongly raised their objection to release the accused-persons on bail for the interest of justice.
I have considered the rival submission and the factual aspects of the present bail application.
In view of that, I made a query to the learned State Counsel to disclose the case numbers and, in response to that, the learned State Counsel informed this court that the case has been registered vide West Agartala PS case No. 049 of 2021 under Sections 195-A/506/120-B IPC, dated 16.03.2021, against 3 persons out of whom, 2 persons are Advocates who have been trying to influence the witnesses and, investigation has already commenced and substantially progressed in the meantime.
Mr. Majumder, learned counsel has submitted that he has no information about any case registered with the West Agartala police station.
In view of the above position, I am not inclined to release the accused- persons on bail at this stage. Accordingly, the present bail application stands rejected.
JUDGE Saikat