Allahabad High Court Judge Pankaj Bhatia granted bail to the accused in 508 out of 510 dowry death cases in the last 3 months. The Supreme Court had reprimanded him in a similar case, after which he requested to withdraw from the hearing of bail applications.
New Delhi: Allahabad High Court Judge Pankaj Bhatia is once again in the news. Recently, the Supreme Court had strongly reprimanded him for granting bail to an accused in a dowry death case. Now it has come to light that in the last 3 months, Justice Bhatia had granted bail to the accused in 508 similar cases. This revelation is really surprising.
Investigation of Justice Bhatia’s recent decisions
Following the Supreme Court’s rebuke, an English media organization examined Justice Bhatia’s recent decisions. The investigation revealed that between October and December last year, Justice Bhatia had heard a total of 510 cases related to dowry deaths. Barring only 2 of these cases, he granted bail to the accused in all the remaining 508 cases.
What is also surprising is that the language of his order while granting bail and the bond amount of Rs 20,000 were almost the same in all the cases. Not only this, in six cases the deceased woman was pregnant, yet the accused got bail.
Supreme Court had reprimanded
On February 9 this year, the Supreme Court had reprimanded Justice Pankaj Bhatia. The court had expressed concern over its decision to grant bail to a dowry death accused, calling it ‘extremely shocking and disappointing’. The Supreme Court had also canceled the bail of that accused. After this incident, Justice Pankaj Bhatia had requested the Chief Justice of the High Court to keep him away from the cases related to the hearing of bail applications.