- (1.) KHEM Karan, J. Heard. All the applicants in all the above-mentioned Criminal Misc. cases are involved in Crime No. 157 of 2001 under Sections 420, 120-B of I. P. C. under Sections 65 / 66 of the Information and Technology Act, 2000 and under Section 2/3 of the U. P. Gangsters Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, 1986, P. S. Mahanagar, Distt. Lucknow.
(2.) IN brief, the police case is that on the information that certain persons were involved in making ISD/std telephone calls or facilitating such calls to be made by others on certain telephone number of Mahanagar Exchange in such a way and by adopting such devices that consumption charges were nil and in this way were causing colossal financial loss to Bharat Door Sanchar Nigam and wrongful gain to themselves and other unvisible callers, the Special Task Force, Lucknow claims to have undertaken secret enquiry and prepared an observation report and after being satisfied that telephones were misused in the aforesaid manner for making illegal money, therefore, it decided to nab the culprits red- handed. It is said that five teams of the police force,each incharge of a Sub-INspector of Police, raided the premises (suspected to be used for the purpose) in the city on 30-5-2001 and succeeded in arresting the present applicants and others while engaged in making or facilitating such illegal ISD/std telephone calls on respective telephone numbers as detailed in the FIR. It is claimed that the police succeeded in recovering conferencing machines telephone sets and other apparatus used in the activities and also in the register of accounts. It is stated in para 3 of the counter-affidavit of Paresh Pandey filed in Criminal Misc. Case No. 4134 (B) of 2001 that it is the accused Gopal alias Krishna Gopal alias Krishna Gopal Sharma alias Doctor in the Army, who has master-minded all this and succeeded in engaging other accused to make money by illegal means. Learned Counsel for the applicants, have informed that co-accused Shivanand, Ram Eqbal, Dr. Faizan Ahmad, Mohd. Aamir, Liyaqat Ali, Babloo alias Mohd. Arshad, Israr Ahmad, Anwar and Rizwan alias Ledley having identical cases, have already been enlarged on bail by different order of this Court. Sri Virendra Bhatia, learned Senior Advocate, appearing for Krishna Gopal and other learned Counsel appearing for respective applicants have submitted that the case of the present applicants stands on the same footing on which the case of co-accused,who have been released on bail and so there is no reason to refuse bail to the present applicants. They have also argued that in view of Section 80 of Information and Technology Act, 2000, the Sub-Inspectors of Police were not competent to search the premises and arrest the applicants, that the offences are not punishable with death or imprisonment for life that the observation report annexed to the counter-affidavit of Paresh Pandey suffers from various discrepancies and so is not reliable. It has also been said that the applicants have already remained in jail for more than six months.
(3.) ON the other hand, Sri Janardan Singh learned Additional Government Advocate has argued that the offence alleged to have been committed by the accused-applicants are serious in nature because Nigam has been put to loss of crores of rupees. He has also contended that many of the accused belong to other States and if released on bail, will not be available for trial. According to him the applicants cannot claim parity with other accused granted bail. The discrepancies in the observation report are not such which may create doubt in the involvement of the present applicants. Learned Counsel has also the Court through the contents of the FIR, counter-affidavit and observation report and has high-lighted that all the present applicants were arrested while engaged in alleged nefarious activities. He says that the investigation is going on and if departmental employees are found to have nexus with the present applicants they will be dealt with according to law. It is not proper to express any opinion on the rival contentions and issues which may go to trial. The fact remains that some of the co-accused having identical cases have already been enlarged on bail by different orders of this Court.;