Court Cannot Withhold Original Title Document Produced By Surety While Executing Bail Bond: Karnataka HC

Accordingly, a bench of Justice Sreenivas Harish Kumar observed, “In this case after the original of the sale deed was produced, the court ordered to keep it in safe custody. In our opinion, the court should have returned the original sale deed to the surety after obtaining his bond. Once the surety wants the sale deed to be returned, the court must return it”.

The bench further noted that the petitioner’s property was worth ₹ 2 crores and the surety bond was for Rs.2 lakhs, that if he failed to appear before the court, the surety bond could be forfeited with a payable bond amount. It observed, “…Law also provides for showing remission in the bond. In this case it appears that the accused is regularly appearing and a charge is also created on the property which has been reflected in the encumbrance certificate produced at Annexure-E. In this view the trial court should have entertained the application of the petitioner and ordered for returning the original sale deed”.

Advocate Mohammed Tahir appeared for the petitioner and Special Public Prosecutor P.Prasanna Kumar appeared for the respondent.

In the present matter, the petitioner was the surety for an accused. When the petitioner filed his surety affidavit, he produced the original sale deed of his property to satisfy the trial court that he is a solvent surety. Pursuant to which, the court ordered for keeping the sale deed in safe custody.

After the suretyship of the petitioner was accepted, an entry in the encumbrance certificate was also made.

During the proceedings, the petitioner applied for return of the sale deed, however, the trial court rejected the application of the surety and hence the petition was preferred under Section 482 of CrPC.

Therefore, the bench noted that the court accepting the surety has to be satisfied whether the surety is solvent or not and for that limited purpose, the court will call upon the surety to produce the document of title of a property belonging to him. In case xerox copy of the title deed is produced, the court may require the surety to produce the original for the purpose of comparing it with the Xerox copy and may return the original thereafter.

Accordingly, directed the trial court to return the original sale deed to the petitioner/surety.

Cause Title: Sadatulla Syed v. National Investigation Agency [Neutral Citation: 2024:KHC:752-DB]