The court identified that bail may be justified even with serious charges if pre-trial incarceration is not necessary, considering circumstances and rights to a fair trial.

JUDGMENT :

Anoop Chitkara, J.

1. The petitioner incarcerated in the FIR captioned above came before this Court under Section 483 of Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, [BNSS], seeking regular bail.

2. In paragraph 13.A of the bail petition, the accused declares that he has no criminal antecedents.

3. The facts and allegations are being taken from the reply filed by the State, which reads as follows:

"2. That the brief and relevant facts of the case are that aforesaid FIR No. 87 dated 18.05.2024 was registered on the basis of the statement of Lovely Kumar son of Harjinder Kumar, who had alleged therein that on 18.05.2024, he was drinking sugarcane juice on the roadside at Bhakha Hari Singh and about 02:15 PM, one Audi Car No. CH01- 4781 came from Ajnala side and Amandeep Singh was driving the aforesaid car and Sartaj Singh was sitting on the next seat and the co- accused Sukhdev Singh, Varinder Singh and Bunty were sitting on the back seat, who on seeing him stopped and alighted from the car and the co-accused Sukhdev Singh raised a lalkara to catch hold of him and Varinder Singh caused injury on his right wrist with a blow of a kirpan. He further alleged that thereafter Sartaj Singh pulled out his pistol but the pistol misfired and the co-accused Amandeep Singh fired upon him with his pistol and one bullet hit him on the fingers of his left hand and one bullet hit on the ground near his feet and thereafter Sartaj Singh again fired upon him with an intention to kill him but he escaped himself by fleeing away from the spot and all the aforesaid accused fled away from the spot with their respective weapons. The detailed facts mentioned by Lovely Kumar in his aforesaid statement has been reproduced in the true translation of the aforesaid FIR No. 87 dated 18.05.2024 attached with the petition as Annexure P-1, which may kindly be read as a part of present paragraph as same are not repeated here for the sake of brevity."

4. The petitioner's counsel prays for bail by imposing any stringent conditions and contends that further pre-trial incarceration would cause an irreversible injustice to the petitioner and their family.

5. The State's counsel opposes bail and refers to the reply.

6. It would be appropriate to refer to the following portions of the reply, which read as follows:

8. That the petitioner was arrested on 09.08.2024 during the course of the investigation. As per the prosecution version, the petitioner has actively conspired with the co-accused Varinderjit Singh and Amandeep Singh against the complainant Lovely Kumar to make a cross case by inflicting the injury on the left leg of Varinder Singh and getting him admitted at Guru Nanak Hospital, Amritsar.

9. That the evidence against the petitioner is in the form of disclosure statement of the co-accused Varinder Singh which is corroborated with injury of Varinderjit Singh in his Medico-Legal Report."

7. There might be sufficient primafacie evidence connecting the petitioner with the alleged crime. However, pre-trial incarceration should not be a replica of post-conviction sentencing.

8. Given the nature of the evidence against the petitioner coupled with the primafacie analysis of the nature of allegations, and the other factors peculiar to this case, there would be no justifiability of further pre-trial incarceration at this stage, subject to the compliance of terms and conditions mentioned in this or