TEESTA ATUL SETALVAD Vs. STATE OF GUJARAT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The present appeal, raises the seminal issue whether the appellants, the wife and husband, trustees of two trusts, namely, "Citizens for Justice and Peace" (CJP) and "Sabrang Trust", should be taken into custody for custodial interrogation on the bedrock of allegations made by one Ferozkhan Saeedkhan Pathan, alleging that the trustees along with others had raised few crores of rupees as donations from certain donors from India and abroad by projecting the plight of the affected persons of Gulbarga Society and by entering into a conspiracy, and has promised that they would build a "museum" in honour of the 2002 riot victims and also told them not to sell their land with the assurance that the trustees would arrange funds for the same, but they neither built the museum as promised nor spent the amount for the benefit of the members of the Gulbarga Society nor did they fulfil the assurance made to the victims as regards the sale of their properties but expended on themselves by benumbing and comatosing their liberty by asking them to face custodial interrogation or regard being had to the nature of the offences, for which a crime punishable under Sections 420, 406, 468, 120B of the Indian Penal Code ('IPC' for short) and Section 72(A) of the Information and Technology Act, 2000 (for brevity 'the Act'), has been registered should they be extended the benefit of anticipatory bail, as envisaged under Section 438 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) that has been refused by the Court of Session as well as by the High Court.

(2.) Regard being had to the aforesaid issue, the question that arises for consideration is whether liberty on the one hand and fair and effective investigation on the other, make out a case for extending the benefit under Section 438 CrPC.

(3.) Needless to say "Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health, no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society." The Works of Lord Bolingbroke with a Life, Vol.2 (Carey and Hart, 1841) 391 Thus spoke Bolingbroke.