Point of Law: Till disposal of such application of petitioners, non-bailable warrant shall not be executed against them but if petitioners do not file application within four weeks, as aforesaid, benefit of this order may not be given to them and the learned court below would be at liberty to take appropriate coercive steps, as per law.

JUDGMENT :

1. Heard Sri S.D. Singh, learned counsel for the petitioners and Sri Ran Vijay Singh, learned Additional Government Advocate for the State.

2. In view of the proposed order, the notice to opposite party No.3 is hereby dispensed with.

3. By means of this petitioner, the petitioners have prayed for quashing the Charge-sheet dated 30.11.2018, arising out of Case Crime No.333 of 2018, under Sections 147, 148, 354, 452, 323, 504 & 506 I.P.C., Section 7/8 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and Sections 3 (i) (r), 3 (i) (s), 3 (ii) (v) of SC/ST Act, Police Station-Gauriganj, District-Amethi, as well as the summoning order dated 22.07.2019 and non-bailable warrant dated 06.09.2021 issued by the learned Additional Session Judge/ Special Judge, POCSO Act, Court No.1, District-Sultanpur in Special Session Trial No.407 of 2019 (State vs. Praveen Singh & others) including the entire proceeding.

4. Learned counsel for the petitioners, at the very outset, has submitted that the present applicants/ petitioners have not been arrested and as per the charge-sheet where the status of accused has been described, it says that the police has granted bail. Therefore, for all practical purposes the petitioners have not been arrested during investigation. Further, they have fully cooperated with the investigation. This is a criminal case being lodged against the petitioners as a counter blast being a cross case.

5. Learned counsel for the petitioners has drawn attention of this Court towards Annexure No.3 of this petition, which is an order-sheet which indicates that the petitioners were absent on 02.07.2021 then bailable warrant of Rs.10,000/-was issued, again on the next date i.e. 06.09.2021 the non-bailable warrant has been issued against the petitioners. The aforesaid order issuing the non-bailable warrant dated 06.09.2021 is in violation of Section 65 Cr.P.C. inasmuch as the learned court concerned has not indicated the subjective satisfaction as to whether the bailable warrant has been served upon the petitioners or not. The law is clear that if despite the service of bailable warrant upon the accused person, he/ she does not appear, the non-bailable may be issued.

6. On that, the attention has been drawn towards the dictum of Hon'ble Apex Court rendered in re: Inder Mohan Goswami and another vs. State of Uttaranchal and others reported in (2007) 12 SCC 1 referring paras-51 to 56, which read as under:-

"51. The issuance of non-bailable warrants involves interference with personal liberty. Arrest and imprisonment means deprivation of the most precious right of an individual. Therefore, the courts have to be extremely careful before issuing non-bailable warrants.

52. Just as liberty is precious for an individual so is the interest of the society in maintaining law and order. Both are extremely important for the survival of a civilized society. Sometimes in the larger interest of the Public and the State it becomes absolutely imperative to curtail freedom of an individual for a certain period, only then the non-bailable warrants should be issued.

When non-bailable warrants should be issued

53. Non-bailable warrant should be issued to bring a person to court when summons of bailable warrants would be unlikely to have the desired result. This could be when:

* it is reasonable to believe that the person will not voluntarily appear in court; or

* the police authorities are unable to find the person to serve him with a summon; or

* it is considered that the person could harm someone if not placed into custody immediately.

54. As far as possible, if the court is of the opinion that a summon will suffice in getting the appearance of the accused in the court, the summon or the bailable warrants should be preferred. The warrants either bailable or non-bailable should never be issued without proper scrutiny of facts and complete application of mind, due to the extremely serious consequences and ramifications which ensue on issuance of warrants. T