The main legal point established in the judgment is the interpretation of 'custody' under Section 439, Cr. P. C. for the purpose of bail application.

This application by the two applicants under Section 482, Cr. P. C. has been filed against the order of II Additional Sessions Judge, Mirzapur dated 20-3-1991 in the bail application No. 144 of 1991 Chaudhary Jitendra Nath v. State and application No. 145 of 1991 Shailendra Kumar alias Shailendra Chaudhary v. State. The learned Additional Sessions Judge refused to consider the bail application under Section 439, Cr. P. C. on the ground that the accused/applicants were not in custody on the remand order passed by the Court at Mirzapur. He considered this fact as a ground which do not confer jurisdiction for him to consider the bail application.

2. The applicants were arrested in a case under Section 60 of Excise Act on 18-2-91 and they were arrested by the Police at Allahabad and sent to the jail custody. The applicants are still confined in jail custody at Allahabad. The applicants were also wanted in a criminal case under Section 302/307, IPC of P. S, Kotwali, Katra, Mirzapur in Crime No. 34 of 1991. The F. I. R. of the said case is dated 14-2-Vl. Since the applicants were detained at Allah abad, the information was sent to the Mirzapur Police and Court that the accused/applicants are detained at Naini Central Jail, Allahabad. When the matter for consideration of the bail application on behalf of the applicants in Mirzapur Court came up, an objection was raised by the State Counsel that the application is not maintainable, since the accused/applicants have not surrendered before the Mirzapur Court nor there is any order for remand passed by the Magistrate of Mirzapur. It was urged before the learned Sessions Judge that the mere fact that the accused/applicants are detained in some other case at Central Jail, Naini. Allahabad, that would not mean that the accused/applicants are confined in custody. On the basis of this argument that the applicants are not in custody, the bail application was rejected. The learned Sessions Judge accepted the argument of the D. G. C. (Criminal) there and rejected the application on the ground that the case is not covered under Section 439. Cr. P. C. unless the applicants surrender or is confined in the jail custody on the basis of a remand order passed by the Magistrates Court.

3. After hearing the learned counsel for the applicant and examining the Supreme Court decision reported in AIR ly80 SC 785 Niranjan Singh and another v. Prabhakar Rajaram Kharote and others, I consider that the orders of the learned Sessions Judge impugned is patently erroneous. The Honble

Supreme Court in the aforementioned case considered this aspect directly. The observations are quoted as under:-

"when is a person in custody within the meaning of Section 439, Cr. P. C. when he is in duress either because he is held by the investigating agency or other police or allied authority or is under the control of the court having been remanded by judicial order, or having offered himself to the courts jurisdiction and submitted to its orders by physical presence. No lexical dexterity nor prece dential profusion is needed to come to the realistic conclusion that he who is under the control of the court or is in the physical hold of an officer with concercive power is in custody for the purpose of Section 439. This word is of elastics semantics but its core meanings that the law has taken control of the person. The equivocatory quibblings and hide-and-seek niceties sometimes heard in court that the police have taken a man into informal custody but not arrested him, have detained him for interrogation but not taken him into formal custody and other like terminologi cal dubieties are unfair evasions of the straightforwardness of the law. We need not dilate on this shady facet here because we are satisfied that the accused did, physically submit before the Sessions Judge and the jurisdiction to grant bail thus arose.

Custody, in the context of Section 439 (we are not, be it noted, dealing with anticipatory bail un