Five of the seven accused were already on bail, including the one seen in the video recording and linked to matching DNA. With the applicant in custody for two and a half years and only seven of thirty-one witnesses examined, the Delhi High Court held that his case prima facie stood on a better footing and granted bail, notwithstanding that he had been declared a proclaimed offender.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has granted regular bail to a man accused of murder who had been in custody for about two and a half years, holding that the apprehension of his absconding or influencing witnesses could be addressed by appropriate conditions, and that his case stood on a better footing than that of co-accused who were already on bail [Anuj v. State Govt of NCT of Delhi].
Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav allowed the application under Section 483 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 and directed release subject to conditions to be imposed by the Trial Court.
The background
The FIR was registered in August 2022 at Police Station Timarpur, Delhi, under Sections 147, 148, 149, 302, 34 and 174A of the IPC. According to the prosecution case as recorded in the order, there had been a quarrel on the previous night in which the deceased’s brother was injured, and on the afternoon of August 13, 2022 four men caught hold of the deceased by his hair and assaulted him. He died during treatment, the post-mortem attributing death to blunt force impact to the head.
The FIR was initially registered under Sections 304 and 34, with Sections 147, 148 and 149 added later. Section 174A, which penalises non-appearance in response to a proclamation, was invoked against the applicant and one co-accused. The allegations have not been tested at trial and no finding has been recorded against anyone.
The competing positions
For the applicant it was submitted that he had been in custody since March 2024, that of the seven accused five had been granted bail including the main accused, that he had no previous criminal involvement according to the State Crime Records Bureau report, and that the trial was unlikely to conclude in the near future.
The Additional Public Prosecutor opposed the plea strongly. He submitted that given the seriousness of the allegations the applicant was not entitled to bail, that he had been identified by an eye-witness in Test Identification Parade proceedings, that he had absconded and been declared a proclaimed offender in March 2023, and that the public witnesses were yet to be examined in relation to him.
The Status Report recorded that five co-accused had been granted bail between March 2023 and October 2024, that of the 31 witnesses cited only seven had been examined, and that the applicant’s earlier bail applications had been dismissed in May 2025 and June 2026.
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The principles applied
The Court set out the settled parameters from Prasanta Kumar Sarkar v. Ashis Chatterjee, under which the factors include whether there is prima facie ground to believe the accused committed the offence, the nature and gravity of the accusation, the severity of the punishment on conviction, and the danger of the accused absconding.
It recalled that the object of bail, as explained in Sanjay Chandra v. Central Bureau of Investigation, is neither punitive nor preventive but to secure the accused’s appearance at trial, and that Dataram Singh v. State of U.P. reiterates that bail is the rule and refusal the exception. On delay, it quoted State of Kerala v. Raneef:
“In deciding bail applications an important factor which should certainly be taken into consideration by the court is the delay in concluding the trial. Often this takes several years, and if the accused is denied bail but is ultimately acquitted, who will restore so many years of his life spent in custody?”
Why the applicant’s case was found to be on a better footing
The reasoning turned on a comparison of the material against each accused rather than on the length of custody alone.
The Court noted that the statement of the head constable who first reached the spot does not name the applicant. The Forensic Science Laboratory had found the video recording unaltered, and that recording shows three other accused assaulting the deceased. No recovery was effected from the applicant, whose alleged role is limited to catching the deceased and assaulting him.
Against that, the main accused, who appears in the video and whose T-shirt is alleged to bear DNA matching the deceased, had been granted bail, as had three other co-accused. On that comparison the Court concluded:
“The applicant’s case, prima facie, stands on a better footing.”
Turning to the State’s strongest point, the Court addressed the proclaimed offender history directly rather than treating it as disqualifying:
“The applicant was declared a proclaimed offender on 27.03.2023 and arrested on 26.03.2024. He has since remained in custody for about two years and six months. He has no previous criminal involvement and only seven of the thirty-one witnesses have been examined. The apprehension of absconding or influencing witnesses can be addressed by appropriate conditions.”
Bail was accordingly granted, with the framing of conditions left to the Trial Court.
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Why it matters
Parity arguments are made in almost every multi-accused bail application and succeed far less often than they are advanced. What distinguishes this order is that the Court did not treat parity as a formula. It compared the actual material, identified that the applicant was absent from the first responder’s statement and from the video, that nothing was recovered from him, and that the accused against whom the forensic material is strongest is already at liberty. Parity reasoning of that kind, anchored in a comparison of evidence rather than in the bare fact that others were released, is considerably harder to fault.
It is worth setting against that the Supreme Court’s caution that parity is not by itself a ground for bail, and that a court granting bail on that basis must record why the roles are genuinely comparable. This order does that work, but the caveat is the reason the exercise cannot be mechanical.
The treatment of the proclaimed offender history is the other point of interest. A proclamation under what is now Section 84 of the BNSS, and the resulting offence of non-appearance, is ordinarily among the weightiest factors against release, because it goes directly to the risk of the accused not standing trial. The Court did not dismiss that concern but held it could be managed by conditions, having regard to the intervening custody of two and a half years and the absence of any prior criminal record. High Courts have gone the other way on similar facts, and the outcome plainly depended on the combination of circumstances rather than on any general proposition that a proclaimed offender is entitled to bail.
Underlying all of it is the arithmetic. Seven of thirty-one witnesses examined in a case registered in 2022, with the applicant in custody since March 2024, is the kind of trajectory the Supreme Court had in mind in Raneef. The question the Court effectively asked was not whether the allegations are grave, which they plainly are, but what justifies keeping this particular accused in custody when those against whom the evidence is stronger are already out.
Nothing in the order touches the merits. The trial continues against all accused, and the allegations remain to be proved.
Case Title: Anuj v. State Govt of NCT of Delhi [BAIL APPLN. 2982/2026]
Bench: Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav, High Court of Delhi at New Delhi
Date of Order: September 14, 2026
Appearances: Advocate Hari Krishan for the applicant. Additional Public Prosecutor Naresh Kumar Chahar for the State.