“How does the high court judge go into all this, post-mortem reports etc., when trial has not started and evidence is being collected,” CJI NV Ramana, heading a bench comprising justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli, asked. “What we are worried about is the high court going into all this,” he said.
Mishra junior opposed cancellation of bail through senior advocate Ranjit Kumar on the grounds that once SC cancels bail, no court would grant him bail till trial was over. He claimed he was not at the spot of crime. He was at least 2 kilometers away, arguing he had videos to prove this. The CJI rejected his plea that no one would grant him bail if SC cancelled bail. Mishra junior also urged the SC to add more conditions to bail conditions instead of cancelling bail.
The UP government conceded that the offence was grave but stalled for time to file an appeal against the bail order. SC had asked the state for an explanation why it had failed to appeal the bail order despite the SIT recommending such a course of action twice. It claimed that whether the accused had intention to kill was something that can only be decided in a trial. Now it cannot be treated as more than a rash and negligent act. Moreover, the state government suggested that Mishra junior was hardly a flight risk.
The state was represented by senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani. Everyone has been assigned security and there was no need for any threat perception with the kind of security assigned, he claimed. However, SC sought an explanation from the state on a recent incident when a witness was thrashed despite the security assigned to him by the state.
The petitioners in the case, the families of those killed, argued that they were denied a fair opportunity to oppose the bail in HC due to connectivity issues. Their lawyer Prashant Bhushan got disconnected during a virtual hearing and an application to re-hear him was denied. Their case was represented in SC by senior advocate Dushyant Dave.
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