Outrage on the Bench: When Protecting Victims Tempts a Court to Punish Before Trial

Two Sentences From One Bench: Where Victim Protection Ends and Pre-Trial Punishment Begins

Imagine you are a judge. Before you is a company whose bank accounts, according to the prosecution, were used to move money stolen from elderly people. One of them, an 81-year-old in Ernakulam, lost ₹1.90 crore. The accused faces 35 cases in several States and wants them all heard in Delhi.

Some members of your own Bar have been victims of the same kind of fraud. The easy answer would be to treat the whole case with the anger it seems to deserve. But the case contains two different decisions and they deserve opposite answers.

The first decision:

where the trial happens The accused argued that because the money was received in Delhi, all cases could be heard there. The bench refused:

• CJI Surya Kant said jurisdiction depends on where the victim was cheated, not where the proceeds landed and must be seen from the victim's side.
• Justice Joymalya Bagchi called it an organised racket that can be prosecuted wherever the crimes took place. The accused's wish to combine cases cannot outweigh the burden on victims and investigators. This choice is defensible. Consolidation for the convenience of an accused, at the cost of making scattered elderly victims travel across India, inverts the purpose of a criminal process meant to deliver justice to those harmed. The court still left room for consolidation if the investigating agency found it convenient.

The second decision:

how the accused is treated before trial The CJI also said that, given a chance, the court would not allow any court to grant bail in digital arrest cases and would set aside such orders. He added that if the law permitted punishing such offenders before trial, that route should be adopted. Here the reasoning reverses. An accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

That presumption is not a technicality. It is the line that separates a court of law from a crowd that has already decided. The Supreme Court itself has repeatedly said so. In Manish Sisodia v. Directorate of Enforcement (2024), it granted bail after prolonged pre-trial custody, holding that even stringent statutes cannot turn incarceration into punishment before trial.

The older principle from State of Rajasthan v. Balchand (1977), that bail is the rule and jail the exception, rests on the same idea.

Why the

moral outrage is real and why it is not enough The anger is justified. Digital arrest frauds generated 1,23,672 complaints on the national cybercrime portal in 2024, with reported losses of ₹1,935.51 crore and they target people least able to recover.

But outrage tells us how serious the crime is. It does not tell us whether this particular accused is guilty. The prosecution's own case describes the petitioner's company as a mule account. Whether it was a knowing conspirator or an unwitting conduit is exactly what a trial exists to decide.

The resolution A just court should do both things at once:

keep the trial close to the victims and keep pre-trial liberty decisions individual, reasoned and free of blanket promises. Firmness belongs in conviction and sentencing. Before trial, the duty is fairness, especially when the crime makes fairness hardest to feel.