Supreme Court: accused who hid a bail rejection from one court while seeking it in another lacked 'uberrima fides'

The Supreme Court has sent back to the Karnataka High Court a bail order granted to a trader accused of a scheme involving fraudulent input-tax credit of about forty-three crore rupees under the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017, after finding he had pursued parallel remedies before different courts without disclosing material facts to any of them. The accused's bail pleas before the trial court and the Sessions Court were both rejected. He simultaneously filed a writ petition under Article 226 challenging his arrest and seeking interim release on the ground that an application under Section 483 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 was not an efficacious remedy, invoking Article 21.

When that plea for interim release was refused, he did not disclose the refusal when his separately pending bail petition before the High Court was listed and heard during the Court's winter vacation; the Single Judge granted bail unaware of it. Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu held that this conduct amounted to forum shopping and a want of uberrima fides, the utmost good faith required of a person invoking the discretionary jurisdiction to grant bail, and set aside the disposal of the bail petition, remitting it for fresh hearing while continuing the accused on interim bail. The Court also directed that a matter listed 'two weeks hence' should ordinarily be computed excluding a court's vacation period, unless a specific vacation date was fixed.