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Petition for Special Leave to Appeal No. K‑53 of 1973, decided on 8th September 1973.
(On appeal from an order of the High Court of Sind & Baluchistan made on the 20th of April 1973 in Cr. Bail Appeal No. 169/1972).
---‑Art. 185(3)‑Bail‑Matter purely in discretion of Courts below Supreme Court would not interfere with discretionary powers unless satisfied that order was perverse, or made in clear disregard of principles of law.
Ch. Iftikhar Ahmad, Advocate instructed by Vakil Ahmad Kidvai, Advocate-on-record for Petitioner.
Nemo for respondent.
Date of hearing: 8th September 1973.
This is a petition for special leave to appeal from an order of a learned Single Judge of the Sind & Baluchistan High Court refusing to cancel the bail granted by him earlier to the respondent No. 2 herein on the 23rd of May 1972.
The allegation against the said respondent was that on the 9th of November 1970, he had entered into a fight with his employee Dad Rahman in which the said employee had received an injury on the right thigh, and, subsequently, died as a result of excessive bleeding from the said injury. In the course of this fight, the respondent Dad Karim had also received a grievous knife blow causing an incised wound 2" x 1" deep penetrating towards the right clavicle in the upward direction. On examination at the Jinnah Hospital, Karachi, it was found that as a result of this injury two major arteries were completely cut along with the muscles.
The said respondent was, however, charged with an offence under section 304, but he was released on bail by the trial Magistrate on the 29th of November 1971. The Additional Sessions Judge of Karachi, by his order of the 10th of April 1972 cancelled the bail. The High Court on the 23rd of May 1972 again granted him bail on the ground that the fight was a sudden fight in the course of which it could possibly be maintained that the respondent had acted in self‑defence. In the view of the High Court, this was prima facie a case of "absence of premeditation on the part of the applicant to commit murder and also applicant's himself sustaining grievous knife injury and that the State has not come forward for cancellation of bail".
The mother of the deceased employee applied to the High Court for cancellation of bail, but the learned Judge refused to accede to her request.
She now seeks special leave to appeal, and it is contended on her behalf that the grounds given by the High Court for granting bail after the petitioner had been committed to trial were not valid or proper grounds. The question as to whether the right of private defence was available to the accused or not was a matter to be decided on evidence at the trial. This may be so. Since the grant of bail is a matter purely in the discretion of the Courts below, this Court does not interfere with the discretionary order unless it is satisfied that the order is perverse or has been made in clear disregard of principles of law.
We are, in the facts and circumstances of the present case, not in a position to say that the impugned order of the High Court suffers from any such defect. We would not, therefore, be justified in interfering in this case. This petition is, accordingly, dismissed.
Petition dismissed.
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