Orissa HC Refuses Anticipatory Bail To Man Accused Of Raising Slogans During Sambalpur Hanuman Jayanti

Cuttack: The Orissa High Court has refused to grant anticipatory bail to a man booked for hurling communal abuses against a particular community and ransacking a shop during recent Hanuman Jayanti procession in Sambalpur.

The single-judge bench of Justice Chittaranjan Dash noted from the First Information Report (FIR) that the petitioner had led a mob of miscreants to attack shops as well as residential houses of the minority community.

The incident occurred in connection with Hanuman Jayanti while the procession being taken and the incident is one out of the retaliation to the incident that occurred just three days before the Hanuman Jayanti on April 14, 2023. The name of the present petitioner along with others finds place in the FIR who led the mob and attacked the shops as well as the residential houses of the Muslim community, the bench said in a recent order.

A riot took place thereafter leading to arson and bloodshed, it said.

Noting that anticipatory bail is an extraordinary discretionary power and cannot be granted in a routine manner, the HC said there is nothing in the FIR that the petitioner holds a prestigious position so as to draw an inference that in a situation of this kind a case could have been hatched against him to defame him.

Grant of pre arrest bail vis-à-vis the allegations made in the FIR will have a great ramification when the situation is volatile and as such it is not desirable to allow pre-arrest bail in favour of the petitioner before he is subjected to investigation/interrogation, the order said.