The Supreme Court said on Tuesday that the rulings it issued are the “law of the land” and that nobody could possibly violate the guidelines outlined in the decisions.
The supreme court made these observations while deliberating on a case involving the application of its judgement from July of last year, in which it had issued several directives, including that the Centre may consider introducing a separate enactment in the form of a bail Act in order to speed up the bail-granting process.
“A decision of this court, including the one in Antil's case (in which the judgement was issued in July 2022), is a binding legal precedent. No one could possibly be in violation of the established principles. It suffices for us to state that the principles must be observed wherever this judgement is relevant, a bench of Justices S K Kaul and A Amanullah said.
The court said that it seems that many instances, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, are appearing where the complaint is that judgements are not being upheld.
To ensure that there is enough information distribution, “We consider appropriate that this order should be placed before the chief justice of the Allahabad High Court…,” it said.
In circumstances where it is claimed that a judgement is not being followed, the highest court said that it is not likely to hear petitions.
The statement continued, “We also make it clear that going forward, we will not consider any such applications, and the registry should not list any such applications before us, as the purpose of keeping this matter alive is only to ensure that the implementation occurs in the context of a larger scale.”
Regarding the issue of compliance, the bench stated that it is the responsibility of the high courts to see to it that the necessary measures are taken to ensure compliance wherever there is non-compliance.
If orders are being issued by magistrates in violation of its judgement, “it may even require judicial work to be withdrawn and those magistrates to be sent to the judicial academies for upgradation of their skills for some time,” the apex court stated in its order in the case that it was the high courts' responsibility to ensure that the subordinate judiciary under their supervision follows the law of the land.
An order issued by an Uttar Pradesh sessions judge dismissing an application for anticipatory bail was presented before the top court panel during the hearing on Tuesday.
The injunction was issued in a marriage dispute where it was claimed that the complainant had been attacked and attempts had been made to involve the husband and other members of his family.
The bench observed that even though it had been established in court that the petitioners had not been detained throughout the course of the inquiry, the chargesheet had now also been submitted.
In response to the session court's directive, the bench stated: “Certainly, the judge in question meets the requirements for upgrading his or her skills in a judicial academy, and the high court should take the appropriate action.”
The court scheduled a follow-up hearing for July while also addressing a number of other relevant matters.
The Supreme Court issued several directives in its ruling in the case of Satender Kumar Antil v. CBI and another, which was decided in July of last year. One of those directives stated that bail requests should be resolved within two weeks, unless the provisions require otherwise, with an intervening application being the exception.
It had said that, with the exception of any intervening proceedings, applications for anticipatory bail were anticipated to be resolved within a period of six weeks.
Prior to that, the highest court provided rules for providing bail upon the filing of the chargesheet and said that trial courts were not prohibited from awarding interim relief, taking into account the accused's behaviour throughout the investigation.
