Our straight forward answer is NO. No Courts can grant Anticipatory Bail [AB] in a CSR. In fact CSR has no legislature approval and nowhere in the Code of Criminal Procedure had the same found any place. Otherwise, States are keeping CSR as a device to control registration of First Information Report, and to show their States crime record low.
The powers to grant Anticipatory Bail wrest with Sessions and the High Court of the State. Otherwise, on some rare occasions Supreme Court exercise such power. However, the point is Court cannot decide the course of granting AB just on the basis of a CSR and if it does which certainly an absurdity and against the due procedure established by the Law.
When Ambedkar was asked by the Constituent Assembly the difference between “due process” and “due procedure” for latter subscribing due procedure over due process – he affirmed that the established procedure to be followed by the Courts are in the Act, whereas “due process” is the prerogative of the Judge!
He therefore subscribed to “Due Procedure” over “Due Process.” No doubt, he was prophetic in his sense and he therefore drew a thick line between both phrases so to check our Judges not to exercise their powers irrationally. But, sometimes, Due Process overrides Due Procedure, here is a case;
A District Court has granted an AB in a not known FIR number. A layman can see that the Judge was so kind in granting an AB but for the lawman the same was legally untenable and infructuous. If one go by the Order in its entirety, it categorically encourages Police’s to register an FIR against the Accused, despite the fact that the Court itself admitting that the dispute was Civil in nature. The Court went on to order the Accused to comply with certain conditions within a fortnight of receipt of the Order – which normally invoked in a legitimate Bail – I mean the Bail granted against an FIR / Crime No.
It is beyond anyone’s thinking what will happen if this becomes a rule of law or set as a precedent? Where we will end-up?
CSR will gradually make inroads in the process of judicial decision in granting Bails!