When Bail Becomes a Facade: Punjab & Haryana HC strikes down local surety condition Punjab & Haryana HC quashes local surety rule, upholding bail rights and placing liberty above geography
24, Sep 2025 | CJP Team
On September 17, the High Court of Punjab, in the case of Sumit Sharma and another v. State of Haryana, ruled that bail cannot be contingent on a “local surety,” which it said was an “attack” on individual rights. The case arose out of Gurugram, where the two accused persons from Kolkata were charged with cheating and forgery for submitting a false local surety document to be released on bail. Justice Sumeet Goel quashed the FIR under Article 14 of the Constitution, saying that requiring a local surety discriminated against persons and was itself unconstitutional and impermissible, including under Articles 19 and 21.
This ruling strikes at the heart of the principle of bail in India, which is that bail is a form of liberty, not detention. This is immediately relevant to persons from marginalized groups, such as migrant workers, students, journalists, and activists, who may be accused in one place, and effectively incarcerated for lack of “local” surety.
What is surety and local Surety?
In the bail system in India, the surety is the individual who agrees to take responsibility for the person on bail in terms of adherence to the bail conditions and ensuring he/she attend court. The surety can also provide a financial bond that may be forfeited in case the person appears in court. The rationale behind the surety regime is to guard the civilian character of the accused, whilst ensuring justice is secured.
The complication comes when the courts are strict about requiring a local surety — someone residing within the jurisdiction of the trial court, or within the state. This requirement is often justified by reasons of convenience (i.e., a local surety is easier to monitor/enforce against), but this also tends to create an insurmountable barrier. For an accused person who is a migrant worker, a student, a journalist, or an activist facing trial, finding a local surety can often be impossible. Even when an accused person may have supportive family or friends elsewhere in India, geography prevents an individual from obtaining their liberty.
The judgment at a glance
This judgment deals with a critical question that arises in a bail case — the constitutionality of imposing “local sureties.” In this case, two people from Kolkata were booked in Gurugram under the cheating and forgery provisions of the IPC. They were alleged to have submitted forged local surety documents to obtain bail. In the FIR against them, they challenged whether the requirement for a local surety document was unconstitutional, and therefore, any action for submitting a false document was a violation of their constitutional rights.
Justice Sumeet Goel had the following clear view of the matter. He said:
“Mandating furnishing of a local surety’ from an individual who is a native or resident of another district/State is not merely a logistical inconvenience; it is a profound assault on his fundamental rights and tantamount to imposition of an unduly onerous condition, which is, in itself, a de facto denial of the right to bail – which ought to be accompanied by a practical means of securing it, not by insurmountable hurdles.” (Para 6.1) 5
It was said to violate the equality guarantee of Article 14, curtailed the right to reside and movement under Article 19, and most significantly, created an illusory right to bail under Article 21. Liberty, it added, cannot be conditional on geography.
Supreme Court precedents on bail and liberty
The Punjab & Haryana High Court’s ruling in Sumit Sharma v. State of Haryana is entirely consistent with a long line of Supreme Court decisions that have affirmed bail as an important aspect of personal liberty while cautioning against the imposition of unreasonably complicated conditions that can make bail illusory.
In Hussainara Khatoon v. State of Bihar (1979), the Supreme Court addressed the plight of thousands of undertrial prisoners who had languished in jail for years for want of bail. The Court identified bail as central to Article 21, holding that the “right to a speedy trial” and access to liberty through bail are both fundamental rights. This case laid the groundwork to treat bail as a constitutional entitlement that must be made practicably available, not just a matter of judicial discretion.
In Moti Ram v. State of M.P. (1978), one year earlier, Justice Krishna Iyer wrote a scathing denunciation of unreasonable bail conditions. He criticized the insistence upon local sureties, calling it “geographical discrimination” that unfairly penalized those who were not able to produce local connections. Justice Iyer said that bail conditions must be “humane, reasonable and must correspond to the socio-economic conditions of the accused” and that liberty was not something that could be held hostage to wealth or place of residence.
In Nikesh Tarachand Shah v. Union of India (2017), the Court similarly struck down the harsh twin bail conditions included in the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) as discriminatory and contrary to Article 14, holding that laws or practices that arbitrarily restrict individual liberty are unconstitutional, even in serious economic offences.
In a more recent case, Satender Kumar Antil v. CBI (2022), the Supreme Court laid out some comprehensive instructions for trial courts, warning them against imposing onerous bail conditions that frustrate liberty. In its judgment, the Court reminded us that bail is the rule and jail is the exception and that bail conditions must not render release impractical or impossible.
Taken together, these decisions evidence a consistent judicial trend to avoid reducing bail to an empty formality. The Sumit Sharma decision continues this trend and reinforces the constitutional principle that requires that bail conditions should facilitate liberty, not frustrate it.
On ground impact and implications
The abstract principle against excessive bail conditions becomes particularly vivid when viewed through lived experience. The extended incarceration of journalist Siddique Kappan serves as a potent illustration. Once the Supreme Court granted him bail, he remained incarcerated for weeks, unable to furnish local sureties in Uttar Pradesh. For someone who had been found entitled to liberty by a court, this amounted to unjustified detention. Other similar situations arise for migrant workers charged in states where they do not have family or social ties; students who are studying away from home; and activists being prosecuted in jurisdictions far from home. In these cases, the inability to produce a local guarantor effectively converts a bail order into an empty promise.
The scope of the problem is evident in the statistics compiled by prisons. Data from the NCRB tells us that more than 75% of India’s prison population is comprised of undertrials. Many of these individuals are incarcerated because the imposed conditions make bail impossible, not because the courts denied bail applications. The bail conditions in many cases are impossible for undertrials to comply with (local sureties, high bond amounts, etc.). By invalidating the requirement for local sureties, the Punjab & Haryana High Court has eliminated one structural factor contributing to the problem of undertrials in India.
Although this judgment is decided on the particular circumstances of the two accused in Gurugram, its significance reaches far beyond those specific facts. It affirms the principle that liberty cannot be stratified by geography. The ruling returns to the premise that a requirement of local sureties should not be within the discretion of the trial judge since the Court had affirmed that bail conditions must be available to all, and not just those able to produce local social or economic capital. The ruling reframed the conversation away from privilege and toward access, recognizing that bail must have meaning in practice, not just on paper. In particular, the ruling reaffirmed that bail conditions must serve their limited purpose only: to assist in compelling attendance at trial; any condition beyond that limited purpose would be seen as transgressing meaningfully with constitutional values.
The ruling has transformative potential for vulnerable groups. Migrant workers, students, journalists, or activists, disadvantaged by local surety requirements, now have better protection against a system that deemed liberty local. The ruling expresses that constitutional rights and not a friend’s address book determine access to freedom.
Although only effective in Punjab, Haryana, and Chandigarh, this judgment has a persuasive effect across India. Many states, although informally, still require local sureties, and trial courts frequently impose them almost reflexively. This judgment assists in challenging such requirements in many jurisdictions, as we further embrace substantive liberty at the cost of procedural requirements and liberty denial. Much like the Supreme Court’s decision to strike unconscionable bail conditions under the PMLA, High Courts throughout India can now dispense with arbitrary requirements for local sureties, advancing bail law towards fairer and more just outcomes for all parties involved.
Meaningful and Accessible Bail
The decision of the Punjab & Haryana High Court in this case is more than just a matter of technical tinkering; it is a reaffirmation of the constitutional vision of liberty. By invalidating the locally-sourced surety requirement, the Court has disrupted a pattern that had disproportionately affected migrants, students, and activists—one that frequently transformed bail into a right that was little more than an illusion. Rooted in Articles 14, 19 and 21, and drawn from decades of Supreme Court jurisprudence, the decision announces that liberty cannot be based on geography, privilege or social capital. While the authority of the judgment is limited to the Punjab & Haryana Region, it can serve as a model for courts in to determine, and impose, bail conditions and terms of release that are fair, accessible, and tied to the bail’s legitimate purpose—to ensure the accused will return for trial. If adopted nationwide, the reasoning could ameliorate India’s undertrial crisis, restore dignity to the criminal justice process, and bring the criminal justice process closer to its constitutional promise of equality, freedom, and fraternity.
The entire judgment in Sumit Sharma & Anr. V. State of Haryana can be read here
The judgment in Tarachand Shah v. Union of India can be read here
The judgment in Moti Ram v. State of M.P. can be read here
The judgment in Hussainara Khatoon v. State of Bihar can be read here
The judgment in Satendar Kumar Antil v. CBI can be read here
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