A bench of Justices S K Kaul and Ahsanuddin Amanullah said, “The respondents have been on bail for almost two years. We see no purpose in keeping this matter alive”.
Justice Kaul also remarked orally that “nothing has come on record to say that the bail should be cancelled”.

In its appeal, the Delhi Police had raised concerns about the comments made by the HC regarding Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967, in the bail order.

Referring to this, The SC bench, in its order Tuesday, said: “We however make it clear that observations made by the HC in the impugned judgement are only for purpose of grant of bail and shall not be treated as an expression of opinion during the trial…We have already observed in our order dated 18.6.2021 that the impugned judgement is not to be treated as a precedent and may not be relied on by any of the parties in any of the proceedings, more so in view of an elaborate discussion on the merits of the case. We are thus of the view that beyond the aforesaid, no further orders are required in the matter”.

Elaborating, the SC further said, “Impugned order is an extremely elaborate order on bail interpreting various provisions of the UAPA Act. In our view the only which is required to be examined in such matters is whether in the factual scenario, an accused is entitled to bail or not. It is this argument which persuaded us while issuing notice on 18.6.2021 to observe that the impugned judgement should not be treated as a precedent and may not be relied upon by any of the parties in any other proceeding. The idea was to protect the state against use of the judgement on the enunciation of law in a bail matter.”

As it took up the matter Tuesday, the Delhi Police urged the court to adjourn it saying the government law officer who was to appear had some personal difficulty. Rejecting the prayer, the court said, “We may note in the end that once again for the nth time a request for adjournment was made and we had already clarified that nothing survived in the matter really and thus we were not willing to accommodate the request.”

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who joined the proceedings midway, said that “the learned judge has virtually declared the UAPA unconstitutional”.

Responding, Justice Kaul referred to the court’s earlier order and where it said that the HC order shall not be treated as a precedent and said, “the idea was to protect the state against the possibility of it being used for any other purpose”.

He added that such detailed orders come to be passed because “bail matters are argued by both sides as if final prosecution has to be decided”.

The SG said “the judges are also deciding as if trials are concluded”. He added that the HC order has a “large number of personal views of the learned judge”.

Said Justice Kaul: “June 18 order protects you. When we issued notice, we protected you. We protected you saying in the meantime the impugned judgement shall not be treated as a precedent and may not be relied upon by any of the parties in any of the proceedings.”

Mehta urged the bench to continue that protection in the dismissal order to which Justice Kaul said: “We have protected you by this order. I noted in today’s (Tuesday’s) order also that we have protected you by this order.”

A counsel appearing for a co-accused in the case, meanwhile, told the bench that his case seeking parity with the other accused who had been released on bail had been rejected by the HC in view of the observations of the Apex court in the June 18 order. He requested the court to say that the observations will not come in the way of his client seeking bail on parity.

The bench then added in its order, “We may notice that one of the co-accused has filed an application, seeking in a way to interpret our interim direction dated 18.6.2021 and submitting that the said observation was coming in the way of seeking bail on parity. The said applicant is a co-accused. If the co-accused is entitled to a plea of parity, that is for him to make and the court to consider. We want to make it clear at the cost of repetition that the purpose of the interim order dated 18.6.2021 was that the expounded legal position regarding statutory interpretations in a bail matter should not be utilised in proceedings of either co-accused or in any other proceeding. We make it clear that thus we have not gone into the legal position regarding statutory interpretation…”