Widow fights back after High Court grants bail to husband's murder accused
The Supreme Court found the bail orders 'perfunctory' — passed without looking at CCTV footage, eye-witness accounts, or post-mortem reports.
Quashed.
Bail orders set aside.
After three years.
The Supreme Court found the bail orders 'perfunctory' — passed without looking at CCTV footage, eye-witness accounts, or post-mortem reports.
Five men tied her husband to a factory gate, beat him with pipes and belts, and left him unconscious. The High Court granted them bail. The Supreme Court just cancelled it.
Jayaben watched her husband being dragged to the gate. She heard the pipes land — a wet, heavy sound that she would carry for years. She was told to leave, or she would be next. She fled. When she returned with relatives, her husband lay on the ground, his body shutting down. He died before a doctor could reach him. The FIR was registered that same day. By February 2019, the men who did it were free.
It took Jayaben nearly three more years — and two trips to the Supreme Court — to get the bail orders cancelled. The Supreme Court did not just reverse the High Court. It called the orders "perfunctory" and "casual." It said the High Court had granted liberty to murder accused without looking at a single piece of evidence.
When the beating did not stop
Jayaben, her aunt Savitaben, and her husband Mukeshbhai had gone to collect scrap from an open space outside a factory in Shapar, Veraval. Five persons approached. Without warning, they began abusing and beating all three. Then they singled out Mukeshbhai.
They tied him to the factory gate. The metal was cold against his back. They kept beating him with pipes and belts — the sound of each blow echoing in the open space. Jayaben and Savitaben were ordered to leave. The message was clear: stay, and you get the same. The two women fled. When they returned with relatives, Mukeshbhai lay on the ground, unconscious, his body covered in injuries. They rushed him to a hospital. He was declared dead on arrival.
The police registered an FIR (a written complaint that starts a police investigation) that same day, on January 1, 2018, as C.R. No. I/38 of 2018 at Shapar (Veraval) Police Station. After investigation, all five accused were chargesheeted for murder and other offences, including under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act (a law that punishes crimes against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes). The specific provisions of that Act engaged were Section 3(1)(r), Section 3(1)(s), and Section 3(2)(5). The charges also included Sections 302 (murder), 342 (wrongful confinement), 354 (assault or criminal force against a woman), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), and 143, 147, 148, 149 (unlawful assembly, rioting, and common object) of the Indian Penal Code, along with Section 135 of the Gujarat Police Act, 1951.
The Sessions Court said no. The High Court said yes.
The trial court — the Sessions Court in Gondal — heard the bail applications on September 18, 2018. The room was quiet, the file thick with evidence. The judge found the allegations serious, the evidence substantial. The bail was rejected. The accused stayed in custody.
They appealed to the Gujarat High Court. On February 4, 2019, the High Court granted bail to Tejas Kanubhai Zala. On April 5, 2019, it granted bail to Jaysukhbhai Devrajbhai Radadiya. The orders were brief — barely a few pages. The High Court did not discuss the CCTV footage that captured the assault. It did not examine the post-mortem report that recorded the cause of death. It did not weigh the statements of Jayaben and Savitaben — two eye-witnesses who saw everything. The file on the judge's desk felt thin, the reasoning thinner still.
Jayaben, now a widow, approached the Supreme Court.
What the Supreme Court saw that the High Court missed
The Supreme Court bench — Justice M.R. Shah and Justice B.V. Nagarathna — read the High Court's bail orders. The bench sat still as the orders were read aloud. What they found troubled them.
The High Court had not considered the gravity of the offences. It had not looked at the evidence in the chargesheet — the eye-witness statements, the TIP identification (test identification parade, where witnesses identify the accused), the CCTV footage, the post-mortem findings. The bail orders, the Supreme Court said, were passed "in a most perfunctory and casual manner."
The Court laid down a clear rule: when a court considers bail in serious offences, it must examine the gravity of the allegations and the evidence collected during investigation that forms part of the chargesheet. A bail order passed without this examination is unsustainable.
Why the passage of time did not save the bail
The accused argued that they had been on bail for nearly three years. They had not misused their liberty. No conditions had been violated. The bail should not be cancelled now, they said.
The Supreme Court rejected this argument. It drew a critical distinction — one that every criminal lawyer and litigant needs to understand.
Cancellation of bail for breach of conditions is one thing. That requires the court to find that the accused violated a condition or misused their freedom. But setting aside a bail order that was wrong from the start is something else entirely. The Court held that these two actions — cancellation of bail and quashing of a wrong order granting bail — stand on different footings. When an appellate court finds that the bail order itself was passed without considering the law or the evidence, the order must be quashed — regardless of how much time has passed or whether the accused behaved well.
The Court put it plainly: "Once the bail order is found unsustainable, necessary consequences must follow regardless of efflux of time or absence of misuse."
The State's duty to challenge bad bail orders
The Supreme Court did not stop at cancelling the bail. It issued a direction to the Gujarat government. The Court observed that in criminal matters, the State is the custodian of the social interest of the community at large. Where accused are released on bail in serious offences, the State Government, the Legal Department, and the Director of Prosecution must take prompt decisions to challenge the bail order.
The message was clear: the State cannot be passive when a trial court or High Court grants bail in a murder case without considering the evidence. The prosecution has a duty to act. The Court cross-referenced Section 25A of the CrPC, which establishes the Directorate of Prosecution, underscoring the institutional machinery available for such challenges.
THE PLAY: When challenging a bail order, argue that the order is "unsustainable" because the court failed to consider the gravity of offences and the evidence in the chargesheet — this ground survives even if the accused has not misused bail.
The order that sent them back to jail
The Supreme Court allowed both appeals. It quashed and set aside the High Court's bail orders dated February 4, 2019, and April 5, 2019. Tejas Kanubhai Zala and Jaysukhbhai Devrajbhai Radadiya were directed to surrender before the concerned jail authority within one week. If they failed, non-bailable warrants would be issued. The weight of the judgment paper felt final.
The Court also directed the registry to send a copy of the judgment to the Principal Chief Secretary, the Secretary of the Home Department, and the Legal Department of the State of Gujarat.
Jayaben had to watch her husband die tied to a factory gate. She had to watch the men who killed him walk free. She had to fight for three years to bring them back. The Supreme Court ended its judgment where Jayaben's nightmare began: with five men, a factory gate, and a widow who refused to stop fighting.
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