Karnataka High Court grants bail to Darshan, Pavithra Gowda in Renukaswamy murder case

The Karnataka High Court on Friday granted bail to Kannada actors Darshan Thoogudeepa and Pavithra Gowda who are the prime accused in the Renukaswmy murder case..Justice S Vishwajith Shetty also granted bail to five other accused in the case.The Court said that the prosecution had failed to provide grounds of arrest to the accused.The judge cited the Supreme Court’s judgement in the case of journalist and editor Prabir Purkayastha, where the apex court had clarified that grounds of arrest were different from the reasons of arrest and that it was necessary for the police to provide all arrested persons with grounds of arrest specific to their respective cases to give them a fair chance to defend themselves and seek bail..In the present case, the Court noted, the prosecution had belatedly served grounds of arrest to the accused. Besides, it noted that the grounds of arrest instead of containing details specific to each accused, were all identical.“In Prabir Purkayastha's case supra, it has been observed that grounds of arrest would be required to contain all such details in the hand of the Investigation Officer which necessitated the arrest of the accused. In the case on hand, the accused persons are arrested on different dates. However, the grounds of arrest served on all of them are similar and it is a cyclostyled copy. Perusal of the same would clearly go to show that the same does not comply the requirement of the observations made by the Hon'ble Supreme Court. Therefore, prima facie, it appears that prosecution has failed to comply the requirement of Section 50(1) of Cr.PC and Article 22(1) of the Constitution of India,” the Court said..The High Court also directed the Karnataka Director General of Police to devise a "uniform format" for communicating grounds of arrest in writing to any person arrested across the State.Such document should include all basic facts of the case leading to the arrest, and the copy of such memo of grounds of arrest as communicated to the arrested person shall be enclosed along with the remand report when filed before the Magistrate seeking remand, the Court said..The Court said that Darshan and the others had no serious criminal antecedents.It further said it had no reason to suspect Darshan’s medical condition for which he was already receiving treatment. Since, the prosecution had cited 262 witnesses and several volumes of documents along with the chargesheet, the chances of the trial in the case being completed any time soon was “remote,” the Court said while holding that the petitioners deserved to be granted bail.“I am of the opinion that petitioners' prayer for grant of regular bail requires to be answered affirmatively on the merits of the case and also on the ground of non-furnishing of grounds of arrest on the accused immediately after their arrest,” the High Court said.It directed Darshan and the other petitioners to execute a personal bond of ₹1 lakh each and two sureties of the same amount..Justice Shetty had reserved orders on the bail applications filed by Darshan and his co-accused on December 9.The dead body of 33-year-old auto-driver Renukaswamy was found on June 9. It is alleged that he died owing to injuries sustained in an attack carried out on Darshan's instructions. The actor allegedly called upon his fans to accost and kidnap Renukaswamy for making derogatory comments against Pavithra Gowda on social media.Darshan was arrested on June 11 this year. On October 30, Justice Shetty had granted him interim bail for six weeks on medical grounds.At the time, Senior Counsel CV Nagesh, who appeared for Darshan, had told the Court that the actor was being falsely implicated in the case and that the prosecution had "planted evidence" against him..Meanwhile, Gowda's counsel told the Court that she had had no idea of the conspiracy to kill Renukaswamy.Senior Counsel Aruna Shyam, who appeared for one Lakshman M, a co-accused in the case, argued that there existed several lapses in the prosecution's case. Shyam further said that police had not been able to explain the delays in recording witness statements, and in conducting the post-mortem and inquest..The bail plea was opposed by Special Public Prosecutor P Prasanna Kumar who argued that Renukaswamy’s killing was a “clear case of Section 302 of the IPC (murder) and not a mere case of 304 (culpable homicide).” He submitted that the deceased had sustained “39 serious injuries” on his body, “17 fractures” on his ribs, and blood had been “oozing out of his testicles.”Kumar further said that the prosecution’s case was based on solid evidence including “digital footprints, FSL reports and witness statements,” which placed Darshan and his co-accused at the site of the crime..[Read Order]