Scope Of S.482 BNSS Is Limited, Subsequent Anticipatory Bail Plea Not Maintainable After Rejection Of Earlier Plea: Jharkhand High Court

The Jharkhand High Court has explained that Section 482 of Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS)— which provides for anticipatory bail, is limited in scope, as opposed to Section 483, which provides for regular bail and is unlimited in scope, in as much as Section 482 does not envisage a revival of “reasons to believe” or apprehension of arrest once an earlier application of anticipatory bail has been rejected.In this regard, Justice Sanjay Kumar Dwivedi stated,“Upon making a close survey of the section 482 of the BNSS, there could be no slim doubt that the words and languages employed in the Section do not even remotely foreshadow that application for anticipatory bail, could be harvested as there could be no revival of “reasons to believe” of apprehension of arrest in the subsequent application when the earlier application has suffered rejection.”Substantiating on the difference between Section 482 and Section 483, the Single Judge added,”Section 482 clothes a party with a right when he reasonably apprehends that he may be arrested on an accusation of having committed a non-bailable offence. This particular accusation, however, the petitioner may say, does not suffer from any variation from time to time and the new grounds cannot buttress such accusation. This accusation does not occur any change as the direction of the Court will inevitably follow from the accusation which still remains unimpared. It will be legitimate to hold that the boundary of s. 482 is limited, if analysed with s. 483 which is unlimited in its scope and its application. It is permissible for an accused to repeat his prayer for bail on new grounds under s. 483 of the BNSS. after rejection of his earlier bail as the language employed in s. 483 are, “that any person accused of an offence and in custody be released on bail”. This suggest without any slender of doubt or ambiguity that the accused in custody charged with an offence, prima facie, has a legitimate right to repeat his prayer for bail at any time.”BackgroundThe Court was dealing with an anticipatory bail application where the petitioner was apprehending arrest in a case registered under Sections 354 (Assault of criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 341 (Punishment for wrongful restraint), 342 (Punishment for wrongful confinement), 323 (Punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 325 (Punishment for voluntarily causing grievous hurt), 307 (Attempt to murder), 504 (Intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace), 506 (Punishment for criminal intimidation), and 34 (Acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of IPC. Notably, vide an order dated 17.05.2018 passed the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Jamtara, Section 304 of IPC (Punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder) was also added.Two applications for anticipatory bail had already been rejected before the petitioner sought quashing of the entire criminal proceedings, however, the same was dismissed as withdrawn.In the present anticipatory bail application, the petitioner submitted that there is a new cause of action and further contended that he had not committed any offence mentioned in the FIR and the entire allegations against him were false and concocted. The petitioner further submitted that he had been exonerated in the departmental proceedings and that, as per the medical report, the cause of death was not due to brutal assault, but because of the illness of the deceased.On the other hand, the State argued that the chargesheet had been submitted based on police and CID investigation and that the arguments posited by the petitioner were the subject matter in the earlier anticipatory bail applications, and that there was nothing new to file a fresh anticipatory bail application.Noting that all aspects argued in the present application were the subject matter of the earlier anticipatory bail application, the Court found no ground to entertain the application and consequently rejected the same.Case Details:Case Number: A.B.A. No. 5595 of 2025Case Title: Harish Kumar Pathak v. The State of Jharkhand Click Here To Read/Download Order

Scope Of S.482 BNSS Is Limited, Subsequent Anticipatory Bail Plea Not Maintainable After Rejection Of Earlier Plea: Jharkhand High Court

Saahas Arora

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