I. Introduction: The Paradox of Bail Reluctance in Indian Trial Courts

In July 2024, the then Chief Justice of India, Dr. D.Y. Chandrachud, publicly observed that trial court judges increasingly adopt conservative approaches to bail adjudication, declining to grant bail in cases where the constitutional presumption favours liberty. Consequently, litigants must seek appellate intervention from High Courts and the Supreme Court, prolonging their deprivation of liberty while burdening higher judicial forums. The Chief Justice emphasized that judicial decision-making requires “robust common sense” grounded in the constitutional principle that bail constitutes a fundamental safeguard of personal liberty rather than a discretionary concession.[1]

This observation, while accurate, requires deeper institutional analysis. The reluctance of trial courts to grant bail cannot be adequately explained solely through reference to constitutional literacy or confusion about bail laws. Rather, this article argues that one of the reasons for the evasive judicial behaviour in bail matters merely reflects chilling effect of institutional incentive structures shaped by disciplinary enquiries against judicial officers who are seen to be too liberal in granting bail.

Drawing upon recent Supreme Court and High Court jurisprudence, alongside empirical documentation from the book, Tareekh Pe Justice: Reforms for India’s District Courts, a 2024 work by Prashant Reddy Thikkavarapu and Chitrakshi Jain examining institutional dysfunction in India’s district judiciary this article examines how disciplinary mechanisms have created systematic disincentives for liberal bail adjudication.[2]

Tareekh Pe Justice reframes the conventional discourse on judicial reform, which has traditionally cantered on resource constraints such as judge vacancies and budgetary limitations. Instead, the authors identify institutional factors that have created what they term a “chilling atmosphere” for district judges, undermining their capacity for fearless adjudication. Based on extensive review of judgments of High Courts and the Supreme Court where judges sought judicial review of disciplinary actions, alongside Right to Information requests filed with multiple High Courts, the book provides systematic documentation of disciplinary patterns. The authors reveal that merely five High Courts i.e. Bombay, Punjab & Haryana, Gujarat, Patna, and Allahabad initiated 198 disciplinary inquiries against district judges between 2018 and 2023 alone. Significantly for present purposes, the book documents specific instances where disciplinary action was premised solely upon bail orders, providing empirical grounding for claims about institutional risk aversion that might otherwise remain speculative.

II. Disciplinary Action as Judicial Review: The Nirbhay Singh Suliya Case

The Supreme Court’s decision in Nirbhay Singh Suliya v. State of Madhya Pradesh[3] provides a critical case study in how disciplinary proceedings have been deployed in response to bail orders. The case involved a judicial officer with approximately three decades of service who faced dismissal following departmental proceedings cantered on several bail orders he had granted. Significantly, the disciplinary action occurred without:

(a) Any recovery of illegal gratification;

(b) Complaints from litigants or affected parties;

(c) Appellate cancellation of the impugned bail orders; or

(d) Documentary evidence establishing financial inducement or improper influence.

Instead, the disciplinary authority’s case rested upon internal comparative analysis of judicial orders and perceived inconsistencies in statutory reasoning and citation practices. The Supreme Court ultimately held that disciplinary action cannot be premised upon the exercise of judicial discretion alone, reiterating established jurisprudence that divergence in judicial opinion does not constitute misconduct absent evidence of mala fides or corruption.

However, this judicial vindication for the Judicial Officer materialized only after prolonged litigation during which the officer remained suspended from service, without salary, and under the institutional stigma of alleged impropriety. The eventual exoneration, while significant, cannot restore the professional, financial, and reputational losses sustained during the intervening years. Moreover, as the documentation in Tareekh Pe Justice demonstrates, Suliya represents an exceptional outcome rather than a typical pattern the officer was fortunate that the Supreme Court chose to intervene substantively rather than decline review.

III. The Professional Consequences of Disciplinary Exposure

Any rigorous analysis of institutional behaviour must account for the material conditions affecting judicial decision-makers. Judicial officers, like other professionals, operate within career structures where disciplinary actions carry substantial consequences extending beyond formal employment status:

(a) Professional Identity: Career trajectories built over decades can be adversely affected by disciplinary records, regardless of subsequent vindication.

(b) Reputational Damage: In close-knit legal communities, allegations of impropriety circulate widely and durably, affecting professional standing among peers, advocates, and litigants.

(c) Economic Disruption: Extended periods without salary during disciplinary proceedings and subsequent litigation create severe financial instability, particularly for officers with family obligations and dependent educational expenses.

(d) Social Stigma: Community perception often interprets disciplinary action as evidence of incompetence or ethical failure, regardless of procedural or substantive outcomes in subsequent review proceedings.

These consequences are neither speculative nor easily reversed. Even when appellate or constitutional courts ultimately vindicate the officer, the intervening period inflicts costs that shape professional behaviour across the judicial cohort. It is this tangible risk, that generates institutional risk aversion among judicial officers towards granting bail.

The empirical documentation in Tareekh Pe Justice provides systematic support for this analysis. Based on interviews, case records, and institutional documentation, the authors identify patterns wherein:

(a) Bail orders attract disproportionate administrative scrutiny relative to other categories of judicial decisions;

(b) Anonymous vigilance inputs function as predicate triggers for formal disciplinary proceedings;

(c) Judicial officers acquire informal reputations as “risky” for career advancement based on bail granting patterns; and

(d) Reputational degradation precedes and often survives formal disciplinary determinations.

The documented pattern suggests that judicial officers learn through observation and institutional socialization that career preservation frequently requires prioritizing administrative safety over granting bail in accordance with the principle that “bail is the rule and jail is the exception”. Such an approach is a practical and rational adaptation of judicial officers to structural incentives. This finding aligns with the book’s broader argument that institutional factors, rather than resource deficits alone, explain the dysfunction in district courts’ delivery of justice.

IV. Institutional Pattern Recognition: Jagat Mohan Chaturvedi

The High Court of Madhya Pradesh’s judgment in Jagat Mohan Chaturvedi v. State of Madhya Pradesh[4] demonstrates that Nirbhay Singh Suliya does not represent an isolated instance but rather exemplifies a broader disciplinary pattern. In Chaturvedi, judicial officers similarly faced severe penalties predicated upon bail adjudication, again without any evidence of corruption, litigant complaints, or appellate invalidation of the contested orders. The High Court critically observed that the administrative approach impermissibly transformed disciplinary review into appellate review of judicial reasoning a conflation of distinct institutional functions.

Significantly, the High Court acknowledged that such disciplinary patterns inevitably influence decision-making across the broader judicial cohort. When officers observe that independent exercise of judicial discretion carries professional risk, systemic risk aversion becomes the predictable and rational response. A judiciary operating under such constraints cannot fulfil its constitutional function of robust rights protection.

V. Outcomes Beyond Vindication: Cases Without Institutional Correction

Tareekh Pe Justice documents that those judicial officers who are vindicated by High Court or Supreme Court pursuant to being dismissed or punished from granting bail liberally vindication represent a statistical minority. Of fifty judgments reviewed by the authors where probationary judges challenged their dismissal, only ten succeeded a success rate of merely 20 percent. This empirical finding contextualizes Nirbhay Singh Suliya as an exceptional outcome.

The authors document multiple bail-related disciplinary cases where relief was denied at every judicial level. Consider the case of District Judge K. Ganesan of the Madras High Court, dismissed in 2017 following allegations that he received bribes for granting bail to an accused in a sexual assault and murder case. The allegation rested entirely on hearsay the deceased victim’s father claimed he heard from others in the locality that the accused had mentioned bribing the judge. No direct evidence of illegal gratification existed, no money trail was established, and the bail was also granted to the judicial officer only after the chargesheet was filed and with stringent conditions.

Despite the Madras High Court acknowledging in its judicial review judgment that there was no “direct evidence” of illegal gratification, it declined to set aside the dismissal, reasoning that finding direct evidence of bribery is a “Herculean task” since beneficiaries of bribes seldom come forward. The Supreme Court declined to admit the appeal. Judge Ganesan’s career ended.

Similarly, Civil Judge A. N. Pattan of Karnataka faced dismissal in 2012 based on an affidavit from a litigant claiming a middleman demanded bribes on the judge’s behalf, testimony from lawyers alleging the judge was corrupt (hearsay evidence), and a police vigilance report claiming the judge visited litigated properties through “agents.” Critically, the alleged middleman was never examined, the complainant waited a year to file the complaint without specifying when the alleged demand occurred, and the police officer provided no case numbers for the properties allegedly visited.

A single judge of the Karnataka High Court set aside the dismissal in 2017, noting the evidence’s unreliability. However, a division bench reversed this decision in 2022 on technical grounds that judicial review cannot reassess evidence evaluated by disciplinary committees. The Supreme Court declined to admit Judge Pattan’s appeal. After a decade of litigation, his dismissal stood final.

District Judge K. S. Raju of Kerala faced dismissal in 2007 based on allegations that a person named “Radhakrishnan” acted as his agent soliciting bribes from litigants. When Judge Raju sought judicial review, his lawyer argued there was no evidence establishing Radhakrishnan’s identity or his connection to the judge. The Kerala High Court sidestepped this evidentiary question, holding that judicial review cannot re-examine disciplinary findings. Judge Raju’s appeal filed in 2016 remained undecided eight years later as of the book’s publication.

These cases followed a consistent procedural pattern: retrospective scrutiny of bail orders identified for review; interpretive inconsistencies or alleged procedural errors recharacterized as evidence of impropriety; vigilance reports or hearsay testimony substituted for direct evidence of misconduct; and burden of proof effectively shifted from the disciplinary authority to the charged officer. In each instance documented, the Supreme Court either declined substantive intervention or dismissed special leave petitions at the threshold, characterizing matters as involving unreviewable “disciplinary discretion.”

These outcomes demonstrate that Suliya, Chaturvedi, and the handful of other successful challenges represent statistical outliers. Judicial officers know this. Within judicial communities, case outcomes circulate through informal networks. Officers recognize which disciplinary proceedings culminated in reinstatement and which resulted in permanent career termination. They understand that successful Supreme Court intervention requires not merely absence of misconduct but also specific procedural irregularities sufficiently egregious to overcome judicial deference to disciplinary discretion. They recognize that even judges like Ganesan, Pattan, and Raju where evidence consisted of hearsay, gossip, and unverified vigilance reports failed to obtain relief when courts characterized evidentiary assessment as beyond judicial review’s scope.

This awareness generates a rational fear structure: if even judicial officers without proven misconduct frequently fail to obtain relief, and if obtaining relief requires both absence of misconduct and fortuitous procedural irregularities plus sympathetic bench assignment, why assume professional risk?

VI. VII. Institutional Learning Through Observed Consequences

Chief Justice Chandrachud’s observation that trial judges “play it safe” by denying bail accurately identifies symptomatic behaviour. The institutional analysis in Tareekh Pe Justice illuminates the causal mechanism. Through systematic review of judgments and RTI requests, the authors document that judges do not primarily fear professional criticism or doctrinal correction. Rather, they fear:

(a) Years of unemployment during protracted disciplinary and appellate litigation;

(b) Irrevocable loss of professional standing in close-knit local communities, with allegations persisting regardless of subsequent vindication;

(c) Persistent informal allegations of corruption surviving formal exoneration (the Supreme Court has explicitly endorsed ACR entries noting “doubtful integrity” based solely on verbal complaints and “discreet inquiries” without investigation or evidence, stating that “reputation of being corrupt would gather thick and unshakeable clouds around the conduct of an officer and gain notoriety much faster than the smoke”);

(d) Disruption of family welfare, including children’s education, delayed marriages, and depleted savings during years without salary; and

(e) The documented statistical reality that even Supreme Court intervention is exceptional, with 80 percent of probationary judges obtaining no relief and comparable rates for other categories of judicial officers.

These observations are not peripheral to professional formation; they constitute formative lessons in institutional risk management. A survey of the legal community published in 2022 by Professor Shivaraj Huchhanavar, the only Indian academic systematically studying this issue, reported that a majority of respondents believed the disciplinary mechanism could be misused “at the instance of judges and officials in the High Courts” and was insufficient to protect district judiciary from false and vexatious complaints. In Professor Huchhanavar’s assessment, the results “strongly indict the mechanisms for undermining the individual and internal independence of lower court judges.”

When judicial officers carrying this institutional knowledge subsequently receive exhortations toward “fearless bail adjudication,” the message encounters cognitive dissonance with accumulated experience demonstrating that fearless adjudication carries documented professional risk with uncertain prospects for institutional protection.

VIII. The Institutional Credibility Question

The Times of India report documenting Chief Justice Chandrachud’s remarks demonstrates commendable institutional transparency. However, the findings in Tareekh Pe Justice compel consideration of a more difficult question: what institutional protections accompany such exhortations?

Encouraging fearlessness differs fundamentally from creating structural conditions enabling fearless decision-making. The authors’ research demonstrates a gap between judicial rhetoric about independence and the institutional reality experienced by district judges. Absent institutional acknowledgment that:

• Some judicial officers never obtain relief despite absence of proven misconduct;

• Disciplinary proceedings routinely extend beyond the duration of remaining careers;

• Reputational damage persists regardless of subsequent exoneration; and

• Professional risk currently outweighs professional reward for liberal bail adjudication, calls for fearlessness risk appearing aspirational rather than actionable.

IX. Conclusion: Structural Prerequisites for Fearless Adjudication

Nirbhay Singh Suliya and Jagat Mohan Chaturvedi demonstrate successful appellate correction when institutional mechanisms function optimally and when judicial officers prove fortunate in bench assignment and procedural irregularities are sufficiently egregious. The empirical research in Tareekh Pe Justice documents what occurs when fortune does not favor judicial officers: an 80 percent failure rate for probationary judges seeking relief, years or decades of litigation for those challenging compulsory retirement, and systematic reliance on hearsay evidence and vague reputation assessments to impose career-ending sanctions.

Trial courts exhibit reluctance to grant bail not because they reject liberty as a constitutional value, but because institutional experience demonstrates professional consequences when liberty is prioritized absent institutional protection. When judicial officers observe that colleagues like Judge Ganesan, Judge Pattan, Judge Raju faced dismissal based on gossip, hearsay, and unverified vigilance reports and that courts upheld these dismissals or declined intervention while simultaneously observing that judges like those in Suliya and Chaturvedi succeeded only through exceptional circumstances, the rational calculus favors defensive decision-making.

If the judiciary genuinely seeks to eliminate defensive decision-making in bail matters, institutional reform must accompany rhetorical encouragement. This aligns with the book’s broader argument that reforming India’s district courts requires confronting institutional dysfunction rather than merely addressing resource constraints. The authors’ reform proposals provide a framework: short-term transparency measures requiring High Courts to publish disciplinary committee reports, evidence, full court meeting minutes with voting patterns, and annual aggregate statistics on complaints received and actions taken; and long-term constitutional reform establishing permanent, independent commissions with distributed appointment powers (High Courts nominating only two of six members, with remaining nominations by President, Governor, Leader of Opposition, and Chief Justice of India) to screen complaints, conduct investigations, and recommend punishments with well-defined, transparent procedures.

Specifically, any reform agenda must ensure:

(a) Disciplinary action premised on judicial orders must be exceptional, evidence-based, and procedurally transparent, with clear evidentiary standards excluding hearsay, gossip, and unverified vigilance reports;

(b) Administrative mechanisms must clearly distinguish between judicial error and professional misconduct, with error subject only to appellate correction rather than disciplinary sanction;

(c) The judiciary must publicly acknowledge the professional and personal costs imposed when this distinction collapses, including the statistical reality that most judicial officers obtain no relief;

(d) Structural protections must be implemented to shield good-faith judicial decision-making from disciplinary consequences, including independent appellate review by bodies external to the High Courts that imposed discipline;

(e) Performance assessment systems must incorporate feedback from multiple stakeholders (colleagues, bar, litigants, staff) rather than relying solely on supervising judge evaluations;

(f) The concepts of probation for newly appointed judges and compulsory retirement based on competence assessments should be reconsidered given their documented impact on decisional independence, particularly since competence is not grounds for removal of High Court and Supreme Court judges under the Constitution; and

(g) High Courts ordering dismissals on competence grounds must institute mechanisms to review judgments passed by dismissed judges, particularly where life, liberty, and property are implicated.

Until such reforms materialize, risk aversion will continue governing bail adjudication as an unstated but rational norm of judicial self-preservation. The call for fearlessness, however well-intentioned, rings hollow absent institutional acknowledgment that the system has repeatedly punished those who acted fearlessly and that vindication, when it comes at all, arrives as exceptional fortune rather than systematic protection.

*Managing Partner, Swarnim Legal

[1] Judges Should Use a Sense of Robust Common Sense in Bail Petitions: CJI D.Y. Chandrachud, Times of India (July 28, 2024), https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/judges-should-use-a-sense-of-robust-common-sense-in-bail-petitions-cji-d-y-chandrachud/articleshow/112081666.cms.

[2] Prashant Reddy Thikkavarapu & Chitrakshi Jain, Tareekh-e-Justice: Reforms in District Courts (Simon & Schuster India 2025).

[3] 2026 SCC OnLine SC 8

[4] 2025 SCC OnLine MP 5314