Delhi court fines man for filing multiple ‘frivolous’ bail pleas in 1 year

PTI, Dec 11, 2021, 4:13 PM IST

ADelhi court has imposed a fine on a man for filing 11 bail applications in one year, noting that the pendency of such ”frivolous” pleas floods the dockets of the courts and wastes the precious judicial time.

Additional Sessions Judge Ravinder Bedi slapped the accused with a fine of Rs 25,000 in a cheating and conspiracy case after noting that he filed the bail plea for the eleventh time without there being any change in circumstances.

The judge noted that the tenth bail plea of the accused was dismissed on November 29, 2021. The sixth plea, seeking interim bail, was junked with a cost of Rs 10,000­, ASJ Bedi said. The accused is in judicial custody since November 27, 2020. ”No changed circumstances have been pointed out by the counsel for the applicant except the incarceration of accused in judicial custody. The application being the successive bail application cannot be entertained in the absence of any substantial change in the fact situation or in the law,” the judge said.

She said the successive bail applications without there being any change in circumstances is, in fact, an abuse of the process of law which must be visited with some amount of sanction. ”The pendency of such frivolous applications results in flooding the dockets of the courts besides wasting precious judicial time. Having observed above, the 11th bail application of accused is sans any merit and deserves dismissal,” ASJ Bedi stated in an order dated December 9. Hence, the same stands dismissed with a cost of Rs 25,000­ to be deposited with ‘Hope Ek Asha’ at State Bank of India Branch, the judge ordered. Hope Ek Asha is a Delhi-based NGO.