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In Public Prosecutor v. George Williams (1951 Mad 1042) the Madras High Court pointed out five grounds on which a bail could be cancelled:

(a)Where the person on bail, during the period of the bail, commits the very same offence for which is being tried or has been convicted, and thereby proves his utter unfitness to be on bail;

(b)If he hampers the investigation as will be the case if he, when on bail; forcibly prevents the search of place under his control for the corpus delicti or other incriminating things;

(c)If he tampers with the evidence, as by intimidating the prosecution witness, interfering with scene of the offence in order to remove traces or proofs of crime, etc.

(d)If he runs away to a foreign country, or goes underground, or beyond the control of his sureties; and

(e)If he commits acts of violence, in revenge, against the police and the prosecution witnessed & those who have booked him or are trying to book him

However, in what appears to be a landmark judgment, a bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justices Tarun Chatterjee and V S Sirpurkar have ruled that bail can be revoked if the accused is facing charges of having committed a crime such as murder and the victim of the crime raises valid objections to the grant of bail.

Observing that ‘the complainant can always question the merits of the order granting bail’, the Supreme Court came to this conclusion in the case of Brij Nandan Jaiswal v Munna @ Munna Jaiswal & Anr. The Bench categorically stated that ‘it is not as if once a bail as granted be any court, the only way to get it cancelled is on account of its misuse’.