He withdrew a bail plea, then got bail from a bigger bench. The Supreme Court wasn't amused.

He walked into a single judge's court for bail, saw the judge wasn't buying it, and withdrew the plea. The very next day, he was before a division bench—arguing the law was unconstitutional. They gave him bail. Then the Supreme Court stepped in.

By the time the Supreme Court finished, the accused had lost his bail. The division bench had been told it overstepped. And the legal profession received a sharp reminder: you cannot use a constitutional challenge as a back door to get what a single judge refused to give you.

The door that closed

An FIR was registered at the Kasarvadavli Police Station in Thane — C.R. No. I-190 of 2017, on a date the record does not specify. Several people were accused of extortion: demanding money through threats. As the police dug deeper, they found something larger — an organised crime syndicate linked to international gangster Chhota Shakil. The charge sheet, filed after investigation, listed weapon purchases in neat columns, tracing money flows from a gambling operation.

Pankaj Gangar was not a foot soldier. According to the charge sheet, he ran a Matka (gambling) business that supplied funds to the syndicate. He also helped arrange money to buy weapons. This was serious enough for the police to invoke the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 — MCOCA (a stringent law designed to break organised crime networks, with stricter bail conditions than ordinary criminal law). Prior approval under Section 23(1)(a) of MCOCA was obtained before the charge sheet was filed.

The Special MCOCA Judge in Thane rejected bail on March 26, 2018. The courtroom fell silent as the order was pronounced — Gangar was in custody, facing charges under Sections 384, 386, and 387 of the Indian Penal Code (various degrees of extortion, from simple extortion to extortion by putting a person in fear of death or grievous hurt), read with Section 34 (common intention), and multiple provisions of MCOCA including Sections 3(1)(ii), 3(2), 3(4), and 3(5) (which criminalise membership of an organised crime syndicate, abetment, and related activities).

What the lawyers saw

Gangar did what any accused person would do. He went to the Bombay High Court. He filed a bail application before a Single Judge.

The judge was not inclined to grant bail. The standard judicial signal — tough questions, a sceptical tone — told Gangar's lawyers the answer was going to be no. The single judge's courtroom fell silent as the withdrawal memo was handed up. They withdrew the application. The Single Judge dismissed it as withdrawn on July 13, 2018.

That should have been the end of that route. It was only the beginning of a different one.

The very next day

Gangar's lawyers changed strategy entirely. They filed a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution (the High Court's power to issue directions, orders, or writs) before a Division Bench — a larger bench of two judges. This time, they were not asking for bail. They were challenging the constitutional validity of two specific provisions of MCOCA: Section 23(1)(a), which deals with prior approval for prosecution, and Section 21(4), which imposes twin conditions for bail (the accused must prove both that there are reasonable grounds to believe he is not guilty, and that he is not likely to commit any offence while on bail).

The argument was that these provisions were unconstitutional. And while the court considered that challenge, the lawyers asked for interim relief — temporary release on bail until the constitutional question was decided.

The Division Bench agreed. On January 29, 2019, the file felt thin — the judges had before them a writ challenging statutory vires, not a bail application. Yet they issued a rule (formally admitted the petition for hearing) and granted interim bail to Gangar. The order was brief, almost perfunctory.

Why the State cried foul

The State of Maharashtra appealed to the Supreme Court under Article 136 (the Supreme Court's power to grant special leave to appeal against any judgment or order of any court or tribunal in the country). The appeal was registered as Criminal Appeal No. 1493 of 2021.

The State's argument was simple and damning: this was forum shopping. Gangar had tried his luck before a Single Judge, seen the writing on the wall, withdrawn, and then walked into a Division Bench with a constitutional challenge that was really a disguised bail application. The interim bail, the State said, was not a genuine interim measure — it effectively granted the final relief that the writ petition sought. If the Division Bench later upheld the MCOCA provisions, Gangar would have enjoyed bail for years by then. If it struck them down, he would have been on bail anyway. Either way, the State lost.

The Supreme Court bench — Justice M. R. Shah and Justice Sanjiv Khanna — leaned forward as the State's counsel argued forum shopping. The smell of old paper from the case files filled the courtroom as the judges listened, their expressions unreadable.

The Supreme Court's answer

The bench heard the appeal on December 3, 2021. It did not mince words.

"Where an accused withdraws a bail application before a Single Judge upon the court being disinclined to grant bail, and then files a writ petition before a Division Bench under the guise of challenging statutory vires (the legal validity of a statute) to obtain interim bail, this constitutes forum shopping which is highly deprecated and disentitles the accused to bail," the bench observed.

The court also rejected a common defence — that the accused had not misused his liberty while on bail. The bench clarified that quashing a legally wrong bail order and cancelling bail for misuse of liberty are two different things, governed by different criteria. The fact that Gangar had not misused his freedom was irrelevant because the bail order itself was legally unsound from the start.

The Supreme Court relied on its own recent judgment in M/s Neeharika Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd. v. State of Maharashtra and Others (decided on April 13, 2021), which had laid down similar principles about the limits of interim relief in writ petitions. In that case too, the court had cautioned High Courts against granting interim relief that effectively disposed of the main petition, particularly when the petition challenged statutory provisions.

The ratio decidendi of the present case was clear: a Division Bench of the High Court ought not to release an accused on bail by way of interim relief in a writ petition, particularly when the writ petition challenges the vires of statutory provisions and such interim relief effectively grants the final relief sought. The court also distinguished the inherent powers under Section 482 of the Cr.P.C., noting that those powers cannot be used to circumvent the specific procedural safeguards built into MCOCA.

Back to custody

The Supreme Court allowed the State's appeal. It quashed the Division Bench's order of January 29, 2019 that had granted interim bail to Gangar. The operative order was precise: the impugned order releasing the respondent-accused on bail in connection with Special MCOC No.24 of 2017 arising out of C.R. No. I-190 of 2017 registered with Kasarvadavli Police was quashed and set aside. The court directed Gangar to surrender forthwith and face trial. If he did not surrender voluntarily, the trial court was authorised to issue a non-bailable warrant to secure his presence.

The constitutional challenge to Sections 23(1)(a) and 21(4) of MCOCA was left undisturbed — the Division Bench could still hear and decide that petition on its merits. But Gangar would have to argue it from custody, not from home.

THE PLAY: Never withdraw a bail application before a Single Judge and immediately file a writ petition before a Division Bench challenging statutory vires to obtain interim bail — the Supreme Court will treat it as forum shopping and quash the bail order, regardless of whether the accused misused his liberty.

The Division Bench's order was gone. Gangar was back where he started: in custody, waiting for trial, with a constitutional challenge that could still succeed — but not as a shortcut to freedom. The courtroom had fallen silent once more, this time for good.