In Brief
A property owner was accused of cheating complainants who had invested in a real estate project. While seeking pre-arrest bail under Section 438 CrPC, he undertook to deposit ₹22 lakh, and the High Court imposed this as a condition. The Supreme Court held that imposing deposit conditions for bail in private cheating disputes is illegal. Such conditions wrongly treat criminal proceedings as debt recovery. The Court remitted the matter for reconsideration on bail merits alone, clarifying that deposit conditions are permissible only for misappropriated public funds, not private money disputes. Complainants lack standing to appear before higher courts without compounding the offence.
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