SARDAR AHMED vs THE STATE
This criminal miscellaneous application arises from concurrent orders directing the applicant, who stood as a surety, to forfeit the surety amount upon the default of the accused. The core legal question is whether the poverty of a surety constitutes a valid ground to excuse him from surety liability and whether the recovery order suffered from any illegality. The court held that poverty is not a ground to evade surety obligations and that the surety's remedy lies in recovering the paid amount from the accused under the Contract Act. The court found no illegality in the lower courts' orders, dismissed the application in limine, but allowed the surety to deposit the reduced amount in easy installments on humanitarian grounds.
- Is poverty of a surety a valid ground to excuse him from liability under a surety bond?
- Can a surety recover the amount paid to the court from the principal accused?
- Whether the High Court can allow the payment of a forfeited surety amount in installments on humanitarian grounds?
- Contract Act 1872
ORDER
' S. ALI ASLAM JAFRI, J.--- 1. Granted.
2. Office objection is overruled.
3. Learned counsel has mainly urged that applicant/surety offered himself purely on humanitarian ground and that he is poor person, hence may kindly be excused. He has further argued that notice was not served upon him and that full amount has been ordered to be recovered from him.
However, revisional Court has reduced the surety amount from Rs,50,000 to Rs,40,000.
' Poverty of a surety is not a ground and, under the law remedy is available to the applicant to recover the amount paid by him as surety, from the said accused with recourse to specific provisions in the Contract Act. The impugned order does not show that any illegality or irregularity was committed by the learned trial Court or the revisional Court while directing the surety to deposit the surety amount. This criminal miscellaneous application is, therefore, dismissed in limine.
' At this stage, Mr. Muhammad Iqbal Kalhoro, requests that the applicant be allowed to deposit the amount in easy instalments. This request is granted purely on humanitarian ground. The applicant shall deposit Rs,10,000 after every six months i,e, 1st instalment is to be deposited before 30th April, 2005 and the second instalment six months thereafter, so forth so on. He shall also execute a fresh bond/undertaking before the trial Court to be prompt in making payment of the instalments and in case of non-payment of any instalment the entire remaining balance shall be recovered as per law.