R.C. Kathuria, J.
1. Jasbir Singh Ahluwalia, petitioneraccused seeks anticipatory bail in the case bearing FIR No. 176 dated 22.4.2002 registered under Sections 420, 120B and 408 of the Indian Penal Code and under Section 13(1)(d) read with Section 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (hereinafter referred to as `the Act'') with the Police Station, Sadar, Patiala.
2. The circumstances under which the case came to be registered have to be noticed in brief. A written complaint was made by Sukhwant Singh Sidhu and U.C. Singh claiming themselves to be the officebearers of Joint Action Committee addressed to the Senior Superintendent of Police. Patiala highlighting the irregularities committed by the petitioneraccused while acting as ViceChancellor, Punjabi University, Patiala. It was stated therein that the petitioneraccused had initiated the process of giving highly important and high revenue generating Information Technology Courses in the University to the private Companies and for that purpose he constituted a Governing Body of nontechnical members consisting of Professor B.S. Bhatia, Registrar, Prof. T.K. Sehgal and many others. Prof. Chanhan Singh was the only technical person associated in the said body. The petitioneraccused managed to allow M/s KCC of New Delhi to run I.T. Education through distance education in the University by signing M.O.U. agreement. Another agreement was signed by him with a small company GCAD Technologies Limited, Moti Bagh, New Delhi. Under this agreement the aforesaid company was allowed to establish Maharaja Ranjit Singh Institute of Information Technology at Punjabi University Campus. These agreements were executed with fraudulent intention after taking bribe money by the petitioner from those persons. Further, affiliation was sold to a number of private teaching shops in violation of rules of the University and the most favourite colleges were Punjab College of Information Technology as it was allotted 90 seats of M.C.A. course while other colleges were allotted not more than 30 seats and this allotment was done without the approval of All India Council of Technical Education (for short `AICTE''). The case set up in the report lodged is that Punjab College of Information Technology is owned by Prof. B.S. Bhatia, the then Registrar of the University, who himself was a member of Inspection Team which had decided to grant affiliation to this college. Admissions in the session 20002001 were given in B. Tech. course. Even admissions were made on the basis of interview which was against the rules of AICTE and 15 seats out of 30 seats were filled through arbitrary method ignoring the waiting list of C.E.T. qualified candidates and a large sum of money was taken in order to admit ineligible candidates for these courses. Another allegation stated in the report is that many students of B.Tech. and M.C.A. from Talwandi Sabo were allowed migration to the University Campus at Patiala under general category despite the fact that no such seats were lying vacant and that the students were not in a position to get admission under N.R.I. category because the fee for this category was very high. So much so son of a higher officer of Bathinda was transferred under sports quota and two students were admitted under this quota against one seat reserved for sports persons. A student of M.C.A., Vikram Naika, was allowed migration from Talwandi Sabo to the University Campus under general category though he was not able to get admission at the University campus under N.R.I. category. By adopting this course huge financial loss was caused to the University as transfer fee is only Rs. 1,00,000/ against the fee of Rs. 8,00,000/ (US dollars 16,000) for N.R.I. seats. It was further stated that Bhupinder Bir Singh, who was ineligible and unqualified, was allowed admission in B.Tech. course on 8.11.2000 after the expiry of the dates of admission. His result was declared in December 2000 while admission was granted to him for the course commencing from September 2000 and thus a fraud had been committed by the petitioner in connivance with other authorities. In another case, son of Dr. H.S. Pannu, who was close to the petitioner, was admitted in B.Tech. course though he was not eligible to get admission as he had done two years certificate course from Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology (SLIET). The University had already declared, that certificate course would that be equivalent to 10+2. This favour too was done after taking money. Son of the Registrar was also migrated from Talwandi Sabo to University Campus from retrospective date so as to illegally benefit the Registrar to the extent of Rs. 1 lac and thus a loss on that account was caused to the University. The petitioner is stated to have allowed appointments of Tara Singh Aritra, Kulwant Singh Grewal and Dr. Ajit Singh Puri in order to give undue benefits to them by adopting corrupt means. Even the funds collected by the private institutes like Maharaja Ranjit Singh Institute of Information Technology and Guru Gobind Singh Institute of Information Technology (Damdama Sahib) were also misused by the petitioner. He had also claimed false T.A. and D.A. and had spent funds of the University on various cultural melas like Diwali Mela etc. and thus wasted the students funds. The case is still under investigation.
3. After the case was registered, the petitioner had applied for anticipatory bail vide bail application No. 76 of 2.5.2002 which was rejected on 4.5.2002 by the Special Judge, Patiala primarily on the ground that the allegations levelled against the petitioner accused are of serious nature and presence of the petitioner for custodial interrogation is required by the investigating agency. It was thereafter, the petitioner approached this Court for bail.
4. While pressing for the bail of the petitioner, learned counsel representing him has primarily urged before me that the authors of the report themselves have stated that irregularities have been committed by the petitioner during the period he remained as ViceChancellor of the Punjabi University. Thus not even an inference of cheating or corruption can be drawn against him what to talk of prima facie commission of offence alleged in the report lodged. It was urged by him that not a single person has been examined to support the allegations that any person has paid any bribe to the petitioner and these general and vague allegations cannot be taken as the basis showing the involvement of the petitioner in the offences alleged. It was highlighted by him that as per the system governing the functioning of the University the matters like those referred to in the report lodged are initially examined by the Governing Body constituted for the said purpose and after getting the approval of the Syndicate, the ViceChancellor finally takes a decision in the matter referred to in the (sic). It was pointedly urged by him that this case is an offshoot of a personal vendetta of the authorities at the helm of the State affairs as repeated demand had been made by putting pressure on the petitioner to resign from the post of ViceChancellor of Punjab University and when he did not oblige the authorities, a spate of criminal prosecutions consisting of number of FIRs including bearing FIR No. 76 dated 19.2.2002 and FIR No. 98 dated 15.3.2002 were registered against him. It was further stated by him that the services of the petitioner have been terminated and he no longer retains control over the functioning of the University so as to even drawn an inference that he would be able to exercise or exert any influence on the employees and functionaries of the University or to prevent the investigation from collecting the record from the University. It was also submitted by him that a bare look at the allegations made in the report will show that all information has been culled out on the basis of record which further indicates that entire record is in possession of the investigating authority. Reference was also made during the course of arguments to certain articles published by the petitioner which were not to the liking of the authorities in power to urge that this provided cause of animosity against the petitioner.
5. Opposing the submissions made, the State counsel strenuously urged before me that custodial interrogation of the petitioneraccused is required during the investigation of the case because the accusations made against him in the report clearly spell out that he had subverted the rules of the University in order to fix his favourite persons to run the Institute of Information Technology under the cover of the University and with the help of his coterie, members of the faculty and Syndicate and the Registrar of the University had granted affiliations to his favourite colleges including the one which was set up by a close relative of the Registrar of the University, allowed migration to certain students including the son of the Registrar from retrospective date after tampering with the record of the University resulting in loss to the University, ineligible students were granted admissions against the rules of admission and further carried out a design by making unwarranted appointments, wrongly drawing T.A. and D.A. and incurring the wasteful expenditure of the students funds on the festivals of Diwali etc. These acts of the petitioner accused were aimed at making money for himself as well as for his favourites and loss to the University and with his help documents relating thereto need to be recovered. Under the circumstances lodging of the other reports against the petitioneraccused were justified on the basis of crime committed by him and not on account of illwill and animosity of the authorities as sought to be propounded on his behalf.
6. Before coming to the merits of the respective stands taken by the parties, one cannot ignore that statutory right under Section 438 of the Code has been given to a person against whom accusations have been made to secure his personal liberty. The ambit of Section 438 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (hereinafter referred to as the Code) has been discussed in detail in Gurbaksh Singh v. State of Punjab, AIR 1980 S.C. 1662. The relevant observations, which have bearing on the present case need to be noticed and the same read as under :
"In regard to anticipatory bail, if the proposed accusation appears to stem not from motives of furthering the ends of justice but from some ulterior motive, the object being to injure and humiliate the applicant by having him arrested, a direction for the release of the applicant on bail in the event of his arrest would generally be made. On the other hand, if it appears likely, considering the antecedents of the applicant, that taking advantage of the order of the anticipatory bail he will flee from justice, such an order would not be made. But the converse of these propositions is not necessarily true. That is to say, it cannot be laid down as an inexorable rule that anticipatory bail cannot be granted unless the proposed accusation appears to be actuated by mala fide; and equally, that anticipatory bail must be granted if there is no fear that the applicant will abscond. There are several other considerations, too numerous to enumerate, the combined effect of which must weigh with the court while granting or rejecting anticipatory bail. The nature and seriousness of the proposed charges, the context of the events likely to lead to the making of the charges, a reasonable possibility of the applicant''s presence not being secured at the trial, a reasonable apprehension that witnesses will be tampered with and "the larger interests of the public or the State" are some of the considerations which the Court has to keep in mind while deciding an application for anticipatory bail. The relevance of these considerations was pointed out in State v. Captain Jagjit Singh, 1962(3) SCR 622 : AIR 1962 SC 253 which, though, was a case under the old Section 498 which corresponds to the present Section 439 of the Code. It is of paramount consideration to remember that the freedom of the individual is as necessary for the survival of the society as it is for the egoistic purpose of the individual. A person seeking anticipatory bail is still a free man entitled to the presumption of innocence. He is willing to submit to restraints on his freedom, by the acceptance of conditions which the court may think fit to impose, in consideration of the assurance that if arrested, he shall be enlarged on bail."
7. In subsequent cases, the Apex Court has further clarified that the status in life, affluence or otherwise are hardly relevant considerations while examining the request for granting anticipatory bail. Rather, custodial interrogation is qualitatively more elicitationoriented than questioning a suspect who is well ensconced with a favourable order under Section 438 of the Code. [Reference may be made to the observations made in Pokar Ram v. State of Rajasthan and others, 1985 SCC (Cri.) 297 : 1985(2) RCR(Crl.) 122 and State rep. by C.B.I. v. Anil Sharma, (1997)7 SCC 187 : 1997(4) RCR 268 (SC) ].
8. Turning to the facts of the present case, and taking into consideration the respective stands of the parties and the allegations made in the report lodged coupled with the material placed on record, the prominent fact which is clearly brought out is that accusations of misuse of authority attributed to the petitioneraccused are based on record which is in possession of the investigating agency. The petitioner has ceased to be the ViceChancellor of the University and thus is not in a position to exercise any control over the functionaries of the University and would not have any opportunity to tamper or destroy any other record of the University needed in relation to the offences alleged against him. So far the prosecution has not been able to collect statement of any witness during the investigation of the case which could reveal that bribe money had been paid to the petitioner in consideration of the alleged favours, the petitioner is stated to have extended to the persons named in the report.
9. During the course of arguments, it was not disputed by the State Counsel that in pursuance to the directions given in Criminal Misc. No. 10612M of 2002 by this Court in its order dated 21.3.2002, the petitioner has already reported for investigation. Thus it can not be said that he has put any hindrance in the investigation of the earlier cases registered against him. In this case, interim bail was granted to the petitioner as per order dated 9.5.2002 of this Court. It is not the case of the prosecution that the petitioneraccused has refused to join the investigation in this case and this is not a case where it can be remotely suggested that he would flee from justice.
Taking into account the nature of the accusations made against the petitioner and the evidence collected by the prosecution the petitioner deserves to be granted the concession of prearrest bail. Accordingly, this petition is allowed, the order dated 9.5.2002 is confirmed and it is directed that in the event of arrest of the petitioner by the Investigating Officer in the present case he shall be released on bail on the petitioner furnishing bail bond and surety bond to his satisfaction undertaking therein to abide by the conditions laid down in the provisions of Clauses (i) to (iii) of Section 438(2) of the Code. The petitioner shall surrender his passport to the Investigating Officer, if he has not surrendered the same in any other case. If after completion of investigation the challan is put in Court this order shall inure upto ten days thereafter.
