Click the Play button to listen to article

On 14 July 2026, a Magistrate at Kalyan, Maharashtra granted bail to a sitting corporator, accused of assaulting three doctors on duty at a municipal hospital, on a bond of Rs. 50,000 subject to four routine bail conditions. Three days later, three of his co-accused were also released on parity.

On 18 July 2026, a Division Bench of the Bombay High Court, acting on its own motion, stayed both orders and directed the corporator to surrender. The remaining three accused had not yet been released. Among the reasons cited by the High Court was the absence of any condition enabling the investigating agency to monitor the accused's presence or secure his co-operation with the investigation.

On 7 August 2026, the same Bench of the Bombay High Court granted bail to all four accused. But what had previously been a release on routine terms was replaced by a comprehensive set of bail conditions. The accused were required to reside outside Maharashtra until the trial commenced, to live only at addresses specified in the order, to remain continuously reachable on designated telephone numbers, to report to the police three days a week, to surrender their passports, and to keep away from the victims and witnesses.

The corporator had eighteen prior crimes registered against him. The victims were doctors assaulted in a civic hospital, one of whom had resigned out of fear. These were circumstances from which a court might reasonably have concluded that continued custody was necessary. It did not do so. Instead, the High Court chose a different course: release subject to conditions.

What are bail conditions for, and how far may they go?

Bail is the rule and conditions are how it works

An undertrial is presumed innocent, his guilt being yet to be established, and pre-trial detention is therefore not punishment for the offence alleged but a measure justified only by what the trial requires. Once the investigation is complete and the chargesheet filed, custody can no longer be justified by the needs of the investigation. What may remain is the apprehension that the accused may abscond, tamper with evidence, or influence witnesses. These risks are real, and they can be addressed through appropriate bail conditions. Where conditions can adequately meet them, a court that nevertheless orders custody must explain why the conditions would not suffice.

“Bail is the rule and jail is the exception” is among the most well-established principles of Indian criminal jurisprudence. In Satender Kumar Antil v. CBI (2022), the Supreme Court reiterated it and coupled it with the presumption of innocence. The principle is a reflection of Article 21 of the Constitution, which guarantees that no person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law. Liberty is therefore the norm, and deprivation of it is the exception. But the principle requires a mechanism for its operationalization. Bail conditions are that mechanism. They enable courts to address concerns that an accused may abscond, tamper with evidence, or influence witnesses without resorting to custody.

The object of bail, the Supreme Court has said, is neither punitive nor preventive. In Sanjay Chandra v. CBI (2011), the Court observed that deprivation of liberty must be regarded as punishment unless it is necessary to ensure that the accused will stand his trial, for punishment begins only after conviction. “Necessity”, therefore, is the operative test. It further observed that, save in the most extraordinary circumstances, personal liberty cannot be denied merely on the belief that “he will tamper with the witnesses”. If such apprehensions do not ordinarily justify detention, they must instead be addressed through less restrictive means. Bail conditions are one such means.

The decisions of the Supreme Court reveal the same approach. In Sanjay Chandra itself, the investigation was complete and the chargesheet had been filed. While noting the apprehensions of tampering with evidence and influencing witnesses expressed by the prosecuting agency, the Court nevertheless held the appellants entitled to bail, subject to stringent conditions designed to allay those concerns. In Raju Prasad v. State of Rajasthan (2026), the State pressed a specific apprehension in opposing bail. Noting that the appellant had remained in custody for over eleven months and that the trial was progressing, the Court concluded that strict conditions would suffice. The apprehensions were not rejected; they were answered by conditions.

What conditions can answer, and what they cannot

Bail conditions may preserve liberty, but they cannot answer every factor relevant to bail. Some factors identify risks arising from release that appropriate conditions can answer; others do not.

A long line of Supreme Court decisions has identified the factors relevant to the grant of bail, one of the leading authorities being Prasanta Kumar Sarkar v. Ashis Chatterjee (2010). There, the Court identified factors including whether a prima facie case exists against the accused, the nature and gravity of the accusation, the danger of absconding, and the reasonable apprehension that witnesses may be influenced. The Court framed these illustrative factors as considerations to be borne in mind in the exercise of judicial discretion, not as conditions precedent to release. That stands in contrast to the PMLA and the NDPS Act, under which an accused shall not be released on bail unless the court is satisfied of specified matters.

Within that wider set of factors identified in Prasanta Kumar Sarkar are the apprehensions discussed earlier: that the accused may abscond, tamper with evidence, or influence witnesses. These have come to be referred to as the triple test, a usage adopted by the Supreme Court in P. Chidambaram v. Directorate of Enforcement (2019). These are the concerns that bail conditions are designed to address.

Other factors in the list cannot be answered by conditions. The gravity of the accusation and the existence of a prima facie case describe the accusation, not any risk generated by release. No condition of bail can make the accusation less serious or the evidence against the accused weaker.

However, gravity in particular cannot decide the matter alone. In P. Chidambaram, the Supreme Court treated it as a factor in addition to the triple test ordinarily applied and held that even in the case of a grave economic offence there is no rule that bail must be denied. As Sanjay Chandra observed, to treat seriousness as the sole test would be to recalibrate the scales of justice rather than balance constitutional rights.

These considerations therefore cut both ways. Where a court's real concern is the gravity of what is alleged, it confronts a factor that no condition can answer but that cannot, by itself, justify refusal of bail.

Conditions must serve the trial, and go no further

The power to impose conditions is not unfettered. Its bounds were explained by the Supreme Court in Kunal Kumar Tiwari v. State of Bihar (2017). The Court held that bail conditions can, at most, serve the good administration of justice or advancement of the trial process, and nothing wider.

Section 437(3) CrPC, corresponding to present day 480(3) BNSS, requires a court to impose conditions directed at the very apprehensions discussed earlier. It further authorises the court to impose, “in the interests of justice”, such other conditions as it considers necessary. The significance of Kunal Kumar Tiwari lies in giving content to, and placing limits upon, that residual power. The same statutory framework extends to anticipatory bail under Section 438(2) CrPC and to bail granted by the High Court and the Court of Session under Section 439(1).

In Frank Vitus v. Narcotics Control Bureau (2024), the Supreme Court stated both the purpose and the limit of bail conditions. The object of imposing conditions, the Court said, is to ensure that the accused does not interfere with the investigation, remains available for it, does not tamper with evidence, remains regularly present before the trial court, and does not create obstacles to the expeditious conclusion of the trial. As to the limits of the power, conditions cannot be fanciful, arbitrary, or freakish. Courts must show restraint, curtailing an accused's freedom only so far as the purpose requires. Nor can conditions be so onerous as to frustrate the order of bail itself.

Two consequences follow.

The first is that a condition which does nothing for the trial fails at the threshold, however worthy its object. It is not a condition of bail at all.

The second is that a condition which does serve the trial may nevertheless fail by going further than that purpose requires. As the Court put it in Girish Gandhi v. State of U.P. (2024), excessive bail is no bail; to grant bail and thereafter impose excessive and onerous conditions is to take away with the left hand what is given with the right.

The good, the bad and the ugly

Once these principles are applied, the question is: what does this condition do for the trial?

Some conditions answer it plainly. Surrender of a passport meets the danger of absconding. Reporting periodically to the police station secures the accused's presence. An order not to contact witnesses meets the apprehension that they may be influenced, and where circumstances require, a court may keep an accused away from a particular area in order to protect witnesses or victims. Each is tailored to the risk it exists to address.

Other conditions answer nothing. The Supreme Court has repeatedly set them aside: a direction to pay maintenance to a wife and child [Munish Bhasin v. State (NCT of Delhi) (2009)], and a direction to deposit Rs.1 crore in a fixed deposit in the complainant's name [Sumit Mehta v. State (NCT of Delhi) (2013)]. Neither secures the accused's presence, protects witnesses or evidence, or advances the trial in any way.

A condition may also serve the trial and still go too far. In Frank Vitus, the Supreme Court set aside a condition requiring the accused to share his location on Google Maps, holding that constant surveillance amounts to a form of confinement after release.

Speech conditions raise the same difficulty. A restriction on speech about the proceedings may serve the trial; a restriction on speech generally cannot. In Mohd. Zubair v. State (NCT of Delhi) (2022), the State sought a blanket prohibition on tweeting by the accused, a condition the Court declined to impose. But, in Gulfisha Fatima v. State (NCT of Delhi) (2026), the Court while granting bail, directed that the accused shall not participate in, address, or attend any gathering, rally or meeting, until the conclusion of trial, and shall not circulate any post, handbill, poster, or banner in any form whatsoever. The restriction was framed as a safeguard in the interests of national security, public order, and the integrity of the trial. The trial was already protected by separate conditions. What remained was a blanket restriction unconfined by subject matter.

The sharpest instances involve matters that bail conditions have no business touching. In Aparna Bhat v. State of M.P. (2021), a man accused of sexual harassment was directed to present himself before the prosecutrix so that she could tie a rakhi on his wrist. In Odisha, accused persons were directed to clean police stations as a condition of bail. The Supreme Court declared such conditions null and void. The Court reached the result through the guarantee of dignity rather than the law on bail conditions.

More than verbal respect

The Bombay High Court's order records the submission of the amicus curiae and senior counsel that, although the accused could in the circumstances have remained in custody for a longer period, the Court might instead impose stringent bail conditions. The Bench accepted that submission and, for reasons recorded, released all four accused on stringent conditions.

That is the sequence with which this article began. Apprehensions remained. Conditions answered them, and the accused were released.

The Court also recorded what troubled it. An elected representative accused of assaulting his own voters, it observed, dents the fabric of democracy and erodes public confidence. That was a matter of gravity, and no condition could answer it. It was not, however, by itself decisive. The risks to the trial could be met by conditions, and bail followed.

No enquiry into bail is complete until the court has asked whether a condition would suffice. Equally, no condition is properly imposed until the court has asked what it does for the trial. Neither question is difficult. Both arise daily in courts where bail is decided. The number of cases that have nevertheless reached the Supreme Court suggests that they are not always asked.

Bail is the rule and jail the exception. Bail conditions are often how that principle is given effect. The Supreme Court put the point in Sanjay Chandra better than it can be put here: courts owe more than verbal respect to the principle that punishment begins after conviction, and that every person is presumed innocent until duly tried and found guilty.

Author is an Advocate practicing at Supreme Court of India. Views are personal.

Tags: