Point of Law: Gravity or seriousness of allegations alone cannot be a ground to deny bail to the accused if the facts and circumstances of the case entitles the accused to be released on bail.

JUDGMENT :

Subramonium Prasad, J.

1. The petitioner has filed the present application for grant of interim bail for period of 30 days in FIR No. 39/2021 dated 07.02.2021 registered at Police Station Civil Lines for offences under Section 420 IPC.

2. The facts in brief leading to the instant petitions are as follows:-

i. It is stated that the complainant uploaded certain articles up for sale on OLX website. In response to her offer of sale, she got a call from mobile No.8099320332 by one Raghuvendra Singh, who offered Rs.21,000/- for the said items, to which the complainant agreed and the transaction was to be done through online payment mode. A dummy transaction of Rs.21/- was done by Raghuvendra to verify the correctness of the transaction.

ii. It is stated that Raghavendra Singh resisted to do a complete transaction through internet banking and insisted to make transactions in tranches on Paytm, Google Pay, HDFC and SBI. It is stated that the complainant transferred a total of Rs.34,000/-. After which, the complainant was not able to contact the said Raghavendra Singh after calling multiple times and suspected that she had been defrauded by the said person.

iii. Based on this information, FIR No.39/2021 dated 07.02.2021 registered at Police Station Civil Lines for offences under Section 420 IPC. SI Kishan Chand and SI Rohit, in charge of Cyber Crime Cell, North District, Maurice Nagar were assigned the case and made efforts to understand the modus operandi and to nab the accused persons.

3. After preliminary enquiries, one Kapil Kumar Rajoria, a student of 12th Standard stated that he made friends with petitioner Manvendra Singh, who allegedly lured him with a sum Rs.1,000/- if he owned a bank account and operated a phone number under a fictitious name and address. It is stated that Kapil Kumar Rajoria opened a bank account accordingly and the ATM card cheque book was with Manvendra Singh.

i. It is stated that Kapil Kumar Rajoria was arrested from Anandpuri, Mathura, U.P. and was remanded to Police custody for two days. The involvement of other accused was revealed to the Police.

ii. Based on revelations, Sajid (petitioner in BAIL APPLN. 3877/2021) was interrogated, he stated that he is a taxi driver and had made friends with Waris (petitioner in BAIL APPLN. 2753/2021), who allegedly enticed him to open a fake bank account with a sum Rs.2,000/- if he owned a bank account and operated a phone number under a fictitious name and address. Accordingly, Sajid opened numerous bank accounts with HDFC bank, ICICI bank, IDBI bank, IPO Bank, Fincare Small Finance Bank. Sajid further allegedly disclosed that before depositing money in the abovementioned accounts, Waris would call him and inform him. On checking the statements of these bank accounts, it was noticed that on 07.02.2021 a payment of Rs.20,000/- was deposited by Waris into Sajid’s Indian Post Payments Bank account. Petitioner/Sajid was arrested on 11.02.2021.

iii. Further joint enquiries by the Cyber Cell and the Police, got them in contact with the Manvendra Singh (petitioner in BAIL APPLN. 2831/2021), who stated that he was preparing for a government job and had made friends with Waris who allegedly lured him to commit online frauds and told him that online bank accounts with fictitious addresses had already been opened and the stage was set to dupe people without any detection. Waris allegedly told him that he would be paid Rs.5,000/- per transaction for each account. Petitioner/Manvendra Singh was arrested on 11.02.2021.

iv. After this, on 13.02.2021, the three accused persons, namely, Kapil Kumar Rajoria, Sajid, and Manvendra Singh were produced before the learned Magistrate, who remanded them to 14 days’ judicial custody.

v. During the custodial interrogation of the accused/Waris, he allegedly disclosed that he was working as a private school teacher and during this time he was introduced to the petitioner/Moveen, R/o Village-Bheelamka, Tehsil-Deeg, Bharatpur, Rajasthan; who lured