The main legal point established in the judgment is that the object of bail is to secure the appearance of the accused person at his trial, and pre-conviction detention should not be resorted to except in cases of necessity to secure attendance at the trial or upon material that the accused will tamper with the witnesses if left at liberty.

Siddharth Mridul, J.:--

1. The present is a petition under Section 439 CrPC, 1973 on behalf of the applicant/accused Rajat Sharma seeking bail in FIR No. 11/2014 registered at Police Station- EOW, Mandir Marg under Sections 406/420/120B IPC.

2. At the outset, it is noticed that the applicant has been in judicial custody since 02.11.2014 and that the subject charge-sheet has been filed on 29.12.2014 after thorough investigation.

3. Mr. Vikas Pahwa, learned senior counsel appearing on behalf of the applicant, has urged that there are no allegations against applicant, who was the Bank Manager, having accepted any illegal gratification. Further it is argued by Mr. Pahwa that there is no likelihood of the trial commencing at an early date since the CFSL report with respect to the gold deposit is still awaited. Furthermore it has been urged that the beneficiaries to the subject loans are yet to be charge-sheeted. Finally it is urged by Mr. Pahwa that the applicant has been in custody for a period of over five months and his two minor children aged about 10 and 3 years respectively are being subjected to undue harassment in the absence of their only bread earner.

4. On the contrary, it has been urged by Ms Isha Khanna, learned APP appearing on behalf of the State, that the applicant, who was the Manager of the branch not only exceeded his financial limits but got appointed a relative of the beneficiaries as an appraiser qua the subject loans. It is also urged by Ms Khanna that the applicant is guilty of conspiracy inasmuch as he was responsible for extending loans to the beneficiaries when he was the Branch Manager in Karol Bagh and continued to benefit the same persons when he was shifted to the Connaught Place branch.

5. The applicant herein is accused of advancing gold loans amounting to Rs.21.30crores to the accused beneficiaries in connivance with the bank panel appraisers, who prepared inflated bogus valuation reports, on the basis of which the bank managers including the applicant without due diligence released the gold loans to the accused beneficiaries.

6. In a landmark decision reported as Sanjay Chandra v. Central Bureau of Investigation: 2012 (1) SCC 40, the Hon’ble Supreme Court has crystallized the law in respect of regular bails as under:--

“21. In bail applications, generally, it has been laid down from the earliest times that the object of bail is to secure the appearance of the accused person at his trial by reasonable amount of bail. The object of bail is neither punitive nor preventative. Deprivation of liberty must be considered a punishment, unless it can be required to ensure that an accused person will stand his trial when called upon. The courts owe more than verbal respect to the principle that punishment begins after conviction, and that every man is deemed to be innocent until duly tried and duly found guilty.

22. From the earliest times, it was appreciated that detention in custody pending completion of trial could be a cause of great hardship. From time to time, necessity demands that some un-convicted persons should be held in custody pending trial to secure their attendance at the trial but in such cases, ‘necessity’ is the operative test. In this country, it would be quite contrary to the concept of personal liberty enshrined in the Constitution that any person should be punished in respect of any matter, upon which, he has not been convicted or that in any circumstances, he should be deprived of his liberty upon only the belief that he will tamper with the witnesses if left at liberty, save in the most extraordinary circumstances.

23. Apart from the question of prevention being the object of a refusal of bail, one must not lose sight of the fact that any imprisonment before conviction has a substantial punitive content and it would be improper for any Court to refuse bail as a mark of disapproval of former conduct whether the accused has been convicted for it or not or to refuse bail to an un-conv