The Supreme Court has clarified that it has not established any rule requiring convicts to serve half of their sentence before being eligible for bail. This decision came while addressing a case challenging the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s denial of a sentence suspension.
The High Court had referenced a previous Supreme Court ruling in Atul alias Ashutosh v. State of Madhya Pradesh (2024), which involved granting bail to a convict who had served half his sentence. However, the Supreme Court emphasized that the judgment was case-specific and not a precedent mandating a half-term requirement for bail considerations.
A bench comprising Justice Abhay S. Oka and Justice Augustine George Masih observed that the High Court misinterpreted the earlier ruling. “In that case, the convict had served half of the sentence, but this Court never stated that bail can only be granted after serving half the term,” the bench clarified.
Given that the maximum sentence in the current case is four years and the appeal pending in the High Court is unlikely to be resolved soon, the Supreme Court allowed the suspension of the appellant’s sentence, subject to trial court conditions.
This ruling reinforces the principle that post-conviction bail decisions should hinge on individual case circumstances, not rigid benchmarks.
