The High Court of Karnataka has directed maintenance of Register of Sureties (RoS) in all the courts across State while issuing guidelines to prevent instances of production of fake sureties in anticipatory bail, regular bail, and other cases before courts.
The court said that the names and details of the sureties by noting down the crime number, name of the police station, name of the accused, the name and full particulars of the sureties to be maintained in the case information software used by the courts by creating a module for all the courts to maintain a RoS, which would be common for all district courts in the State.
Justice Suraj Govindaraj issued the direction while hearing a petition filed by a person, whose property was given as a surety in a bail matter by creating fake documents without his knowledge and he came to know about it only when the authorities put his property on sale, as the accused in the criminal case had defaulted the bail condition.
The court said that if surety is provided in the form of property, then the details of the property has to be cross checked by the concerned officer of the court from the website of the Revenue Department by using the BHOOMI or KAVERI software, and the Revenue Department’s Principal Secretary has to arrange training programme in this regard in coordination with the Registrar General of the High Court.
The Unique Identification Authority of India has to provide and equip all the courts with necessary equipment and software to authenticate the identity of the surety using the Aadhaar card, the court said.
The court also directed that the Presiding Officers of respective courts should check the RoS on a monthly basis and the Principal District Judge and the Chief Judicial Magistrates should inspect the RoS at the time of annual inspection.
Verification process
When persons stands as surety, they should be cross checked with the database to verify if they have stood surety earlier. The courts should keep a watch on such persons who repeatedly come to stand as sureties, the court said.
