Courts can't ask accused to share live location as bail condition, says Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: Frowning upon courts, including itself, for directing accused to share their 'live location' with investigating agencies as a condition for being released on bail, Supreme Court Monday said that allowing a probe agency to continuously peep into the life of a person would constitute violation of the right to privacy.
A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan reminded all courts to ensure that bail conditions should be such that constitutional rights of an accused were curtailed only to the "minimum extent required" and to maintain restraint and refrain from imposing "fanciful, arbitrary or freakish" conditions.
SC: Riders can't be so severe as to frustrate bail order itself
Courts must show restraint while imposing bail conditions. Therefore, while granting bail, courts can curtail the freedom of the accused only to the extent required for imposing the bail conditions warranted by law. Bail conditions cannot be so onerous as to frustrate the order of bail itself. For example, the court may impose a condition of periodically reporting to the police station/court or not travelling abroad without prior permission, the SC bench said.
Where circumstances require, the court may impose a condition restraining an accused from entering a particular area to protect the prosecution witnesses or the victims, the Supreme Court bench added.
"But the court cannot impose a condition on the accused to keep the police constantly informed about his movement from one place to another. The object of the bail condition cannot be to keep a constant vigil on the movements of the accused enlarged on bail," it said.
"The investigating agency cannot be permitted to continuously peep into the private life of the accused enlarged on bail, by imposing arbitrary conditions since that will violate the right of privacy of the accused, as guaranteed by Article 21," it added.
The bench also held that a bail condition could not be imposed on a foreign national to get a certificate from the embassy that he shall not leave the country and shall appear before the special court as and when required.
The bench noted that the object of imposing conditions of bail was to ensure that the accused did not interfere with or obstruct the investigation, remained available for the probe, did not tamper with or destroy evidence, remained regularly present for the trial and did not create obstacles in trial proceedings.
"While imposing bail conditions, constitutional rights of an accused, who is ordered to be released on bail, can be curtailed only to the minimum extent required. Even an accused convicted by a competent court and undergoing a sentence in prison is not deprived of rights to life and privacy guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution," the bench said.
It said presumption of innocence was applicable with the accused and he could not be deprived of all his rights guaranteed under the Constitution.
Taking note of Google's reply in this case, the court said the PIN location did not enable real-time tracking of the user or the user's device. "Therefore, the condition of the accused dropping a pin on Google Maps, as it stands, is completely redundant as the same does not help," it said.