Bombay HC Asks Subordinate Courts To Not Use Rubber Stamps Bail Orders

Recently, A division Bench of the Bombay High Court at Nagpur comprising the bench of Justice Vinay Joshi & Valmiki SA Menezes asked the subordinate courts to not use the rubber stamps in future for deciding the bail applications.   

The division bench stated that there wasn’t any authorization from the High Court to use rubber stamps for granting bail. While deprecating such use of rubber stamps the court stated that,

“We note that there is no apparent authorization of the High Court for the use of such rubber stamps to enable a Magistrate to grant bail. Grant of bail is a matter of discretion to be exercised by the concerned Magistrate, who is expected to apply his mind after considering the material on record and is required to be granted or rejected by a speaking order. A Magistrate’s order on a bail application certainly cannot be rendered on a rubber stamp as we note, has done in the present case. The bail order dated 09.03.2011 before us, which is in the form of rubber stamp does not contain any reasons for grant of bail.”

The court therefore heard an appeal filed by Ashokrao Pawar who got detained by police officials under Maharashtra’s Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Slumlords, Drug offenders, Dangerous Persons & Video Pirates Act, 1981.

According to his plea, Ashokrao Pawar stated that the orders weren’t based on the correct records. He further argued that no incident forms basis for passing the detention order & recording authority’s subjective satisfaction.

Moreover, he submitted that the said acts didn’t amount to the acts causing breach of “public order” but were at the most acts in breach of “law & order” where there was no jurisdiction under Section 3 of the MPDA Act.

During a course of hearing, the court came across the bail order where a rubber stamp was used by the magistrate, leaving blank spaces which were filled by inserting bond with no other details.

The High Court in its order asked the high court’s registrar to circulate the copy of the judgment among the district and the subordinate courts while directing them to not use rubber stamps. The order read,

“We deprecate this practice, if it does exist in any of the Courts subordinate to this Court and deem it appropriate to circulate this judgment to all concerned District/Sessions Courts, which shall be sent by the concerned Registrar of this Court along with a copy of the bail order referred to by us in this judgment, with a specific direction that the subordinate Courts/Magistrates shall desist from making use of such rubber stamps for deciding bail applications in future.”