BHOLA Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) APPELLANTS Bhola and Ram Singh have been convicted under Section 396, I. P. C. and sentenced to undergo imprisonment for life. Bhola has further been convicted under Section 412, I. P. C. and sentenced to ten years' rigorous imprisonment. They have applied for bail pending appeal.

(2.) BAIL or jail? That's the question. The argument is that till the appeal is finally decided by this court, the appellant be presumed to be innocent. Every citizen is presumed to be law-abiding and innocent. But when the court speaks of presumption of innocence of the accused, it only means to stress that the burden of proving guilt lies entirely on the prosecution and that strict proof must be given for holding that the accused is guilty. This is based on the principle that every citizen is entitled to live in liberty till he commits an offence; and nobody, including the State, should take away his liberty without establishing before a court of law that he had committed the offence and thus rendered himself disqualified for enjoying the liberties of a free citizen.

(3.) BUT the presumption comes under cloud as soon as accusation is made and incriminating material comes before the investigating officer. It is only because of this cloud that the law permits the arrest and consequential curtailment of personal liberty of the accused even before the guilt is established in a court of law. The cloud deepens and the matter oversteps the zone of presumption and enters the realm of evidence when the case goes to court and evidence stasts. It then becomes a matter of evidence and is to be controlled by the rules contained in the Evidence Act. The lis has to be decided on the basis of evidence that might come in the case. The cloud gets removed and dispelled, when the court records a verdict of acquittal. The presumption of innocence, on the other hand, comes under an eclipse when the trial court on the basis of evidence, comes to the conclusion that the accused had committed the offence and convicts him. The strength of the presumption of innocence of an accused goes on decreasing with the development of the case from the stage of accusation to the stage of conviction by the trial court This variance has a relevance on the exercise of a court's discretion in granting bail to an accused in appeal.