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Issues: (i) Whether the period spent in house arrest pursuant to the High Court's interim order could be treated as custody under Section 167 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 for computing the period for default bail; (ii) whether a transit remand order and the consequent house arrest, later held illegal by the High Court, nonetheless counted as custody for the purposes of Section 167; and (iii) whether the appellant was entitled to default bail by including the house-arrest period in the statutory period.
Issue (i): Whether the period spent in house arrest pursuant to the High Court's interim order could be treated as custody under Section 167 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 for computing the period for default bail.
Analysis: Section 167 contemplates custody ordered in the course of investigation, ordinarily by way of police custody or judicial custody, and the Court held that superior courts may, in an appropriate case, exercise the power to order custody under that provision. House arrest, where it operates as a form of forced confinement and deprivation of liberty, can in principle fall within the concept of custody. But whether it is so referable depends on whether the court ordering it was actually acting under Section 167 and whether the order can be treated as one made under that provision in the facts of the case.
Conclusion: House arrest is capable of amounting to custody in principle, but it did not qualify as custody under Section 167 on the facts found here.
Issue (ii): Whether a transit remand order and the consequent house arrest, later held illegal by the High Court, nonetheless counted as custody for the purposes of Section 167.
Analysis: The Court held that the transit remand order was an order under Section 167 and that illegality in the remand order does not, by itself, wipe out actual custody undergone under such an order for the purpose of default bail. However, the later house arrest was imposed in the context of writ proceedings and not as an order purporting to be passed under Section 167. The surrounding circumstances showed that the High Court was not exercising remand power under Section 167 when it directed house arrest, even though the confinement undoubtedly restricted liberty.
Conclusion: The transit remand counted as custody, but the house-arrest period could not be treated as custody under Section 167 for default-bail computation.
Issue (iii): Whether the appellant was entitled to default bail by including the house-arrest period in the statutory period.
Analysis: The right to default bail arises only when the custody relied upon is custody under Section 167. Since the house-arrest period was not held to be custody under that provision, it could not be added to the statutory period for the purpose of claiming default bail. The subsequent police custody in 2020 also could not alter that conclusion, because the relevant custody for the statutory calculation had to satisfy Section 167 in its own right.
Conclusion: The appellant was not entitled to default bail by counting the house-arrest period.
Final Conclusion: The appeal failed because the 34-day house-arrest period was not treated as custody under Section 167 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, and therefore could not be included in the computation for default bail.
Ratio Decidendi: For default bail, only custody that is properly referable to Section 167 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 can be counted; actual deprivation of liberty by itself is insufficient unless the detention is ordered, or can fairly be treated as ordered, under that provision.
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