Bail in CBI Trap Cases: Why First Principles Matter More Than the Trap Story

Shikhar Sharma
1 day ago
4 min read

Case brief:

In FIR RC0032025A0070, two MCD officials, a Beldar and an Assistant Engineer were arrested in a CBI trap after an alleged demand and acceptance of ₹2 lakhs for a “closure report” post‑completion certificate. Despite the prosecution’s emphasis that one applicant was caught “red handed” and that both were public servants facing serious corruption charges, the Special Judge (PC Act), CBI‑13, granted regular bail under Section 483 BNSS, noting that they were in custody since 23.12.2025, recovery had been effected, investigation was almost complete, and no further involvement was reported. The Court then imposed standard conditions of cooperation, no tampering, no travel abroad without permission, and intimation of change in address/contact.

This is precisely the kind of order that reminds us that bail jurisprudence has its own grammar, and you either speak it at the very outset or you lose the plot.

First principles before facts

When defence starts with “my client is innocent because…”, the battle is already being fought on the prosecution’s chosen turf. The correct starting point is different:

The accused is presumed innocent; pre‑trial incarceration is an exception, not the norm.
The question at the bail stage is not “Did he do it?”, but “Is his further custody necessary and justified?”.
Liberty is the rule; jail has to be positively justified by the State.

In this order, once the Court records that the applicants have been in custody since 23.12.2025, that recovery has already been made, that investigation qua them is almost complete, and that no other involvement is reported, the logic of bail more or less writes itself. At that point, the “red‑handed trap” rhetoric loses much of its sting because the axis of the enquiry shifts from moral outrage to legal necessity.

The right question: “Why not bail?”

A good bail hearing is often decided by who answers the first question and how it is framed. In a principled court, the first question ought to be addressed to the prosecution:

“On these facts, tell me why bail should not be granted?”
“What specific risk do you point to – flight, tampering, recurrence – that continued custody alone can address?”

Notice how, in this order, the prosecution does what the prosecution always does in trap matters – stresses “caught red handed”, public office, seriousness of allegations – but the Court, when it actually records its reasons, does not stay trapped in that reel. The operative reasoning is: length of custody, stage of investigation, recovery already effected, absence of any further reported involvement. In other words, the Court, perhaps silently, has already answered for itself the only question that matters at this stage – “Why should we keep them in jail anymore?”

That is the frame you must insist on as defence: the onus of justification lies on the State, not on the citizen begging for temporary liberty.

Establish a prima facie defence, then stop

There is a delicate but crucial middle ground between “I will not touch the facts at all” and “Let me conduct a mini‑trial in bail”. That middle ground is a restrained prima facie defence:

You show that the case is not open‑and‑shut.
You highlight that the defence version is plausible, not that it is conclusively proved.
You demonstrate that custodial interrogation has served its purpose and further detention would be punitive, not investigative.

In this case, the defence did exactly what was required: asserted false implication, pointed to the prior booking of the complainant’s property, emphasised cooperation with investigation, clean antecedents, deep roots, and low risk of flight or tampering. They also relied on Sushila Aggarwal and Satender Kumar Antil to remind the Court of the settled proposition that bail is the rule and jail an exception. Importantly, the order does not show the Court being invited into an elaborate debate on the legality of the trap, the purity of phenolphthalein washes, or the semantic dissection of every line of the complaint.

Could that deeper factual assault be mounted at the charge stage or at trial? Certainly. Does it need to be spent at the bail stage, where your immediate goal is to get your client out of custody on the strength of first principles already strongly in your favour? Usually, no.

Resist the temptation to dive deep

There is a psychological trap embedded in every CBI trap case: the prosecution narrates its story with cinematic flourish – verification, pre‑trap, trap, phenolphthalein, recovery – and the defence feels compelled to respond scene‑by‑scene. You walk into that trap, you accept the prosecution’s frame.

What this order quietly teaches is the value of disciplined restraint. Even where the allegation is that one applicant was caught “red handed” and the other’s involvement was “affirmed”, the Court still finds that continued custody cannot be justified once investigation is nearly over and standard conditions can safeguard the process. That outcome was achieved not by out‑trapping the trap, but by bringing the Court back, again and again, to:

Time already spent in custody.
Stage of investigation and completion of recovery.
Lack of prior criminal antecedents and roots in society.
The constitutional value that custodial pre‑trial detention is an exception.

In other words, the real “trap” you must avoid is the argumentative trap of believing that you win bail only by winning the facts. Often, you win bail by winning the question: not “Did the trap succeed?”, but “Does the law still permit further incarceration in these circumstances?”

That is the message I would leave with any young defence lawyer reading a bail order like this: learn your first principles of bail so well that they become your muscle memory, argue them first and firmly, sketch only a prima facie defence, and walk away from the temptation to conduct a trial at the bail stage, especially when the prosecution is desperately trying to.

The bail order dated 20.01.2026 in the above case, passed by Ld. Special Judge, Rouse Avenue Court is attached for the readers.