Tuesday, January 18 2005 15:27 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Taking serious objection to the conduct of RJD (Rshtriya Janata Dal) MP Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav both inside and outside the prison, the Supreme Court today (Jan 18, 2005) cancelled the bail granted to him by the Patna High Court in the case pertaining to the murder of trade union leader Ajit Sarkar.

With this the Supreme Court has cancelled his bail twice after he being directed to be enlarged on bail by the High Court. The High Court itself has already dismissed seven petitions by Yadav seeking bail in the 1998 murder case.

A Bench comprising Justice N Santosh Hegde and Justice S B Sinha, while allowing the appeals filed by Ajit Sarkar's brother Kalyan Sarkar and CBI, said the prosecution has established a "prima facie case against the accused".

Observing that many witnesses in the case were yet to be examined, the Bench said, "The conduct of the accused clearly indicates that enlarging him on bail impede the progress of the trial."

"The High Court was totally in error in enlarging the accused on bail," the Bench said while rejecting the argument of Yadav's counsel that his case was on a better footing than the case against Kanchi Seer JayendraSaraswati, who was granted bail by the Apex Court.

Justice Hegde, writing for the Bench, said the Apex Court while granting bail to the Seer had clearly distinguished that case from the case against Yadav purely on facts of the cases.

Terming the argument equating the Shankaracharya's case with the case against Yadav as an argument in "desperation", the Bench said in both the cases the Apex Court has not declared any law but observed certain things peculiar to the facts and circumstances of the cases, which could not be applied generally to all the cases.

The Court said the order granting bail to Shankaracharya was of no benefit to the accused in the Ajit Sarkar murder case and observed, "Each case must rest on its own facts."

Expressing anguish over lack of discipline in judiciary, the Court said that when a higher court passes an order based on facts and circumstances of a particular case, the lower courts should respect that order and should not deviate from it unless a change of circumstance was pointed out in that case.

Noticing that the successive bail applications filed by Yadav had the same facts and legal grounds without pointing out any change therein, the Bench said such applications should not be entertained and warned that if entertained it would lead to "forum hunting" by the accused.

The Court took strong exception to the manner in which the accused, despite a court order to surrender to the authorities, took his time to be taken into custody, the manner in which he used to hold public meetings inside the jail and even threatened top officials when they objected to such behaviour.