The Madras High Court Bench here has suggested to the Tamil Nadu government to review its notification of August 1970, declaring the charge of criminal intimidation under Section 506 (1) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as a non-bailable offence.

However, it left it to the government to take a decision on the issue.

A Division Bench of Justice M Jaichandren and Justice S Nagamuthu said there was a need to take a re-look into the 1970 notification as even grave offences like voluntarily causing grievous hurt with dangerous weapons under Section 324 and 325 of IPC were bailable in nature.

"The government shall also consider as to whether the liberty of a citizen, guaranteed under the provisions of the Constitution of India, is to be curtailed, by way of the Government Order dated August 3,1970, in the prevailing socio-legal scenario," the judges said.

They added such a notification "would place the fundamental right of life and personal liberty of an individual in substantial peril" unless and otherwise the situation really warranted the declaration of an offence under Section 506 (i) as cognizable (an offence for which the police could arrest without warrant) as well as non-bailable.

However, testing its validity in Tamil Nadu, the judges said the notification would hold good and continue to be in force irrespective of the replacement of the Code of Criminal Procedure 1898 with a new code in 1973.

Though both the codes declared the offence under Section 506 (1) as bailable, the State government had taken a decision to make it non-bailable.

If the government had made it a non-bailable offence by amending the 1898 CrPC through a State legislation, such an amendment would have perished along with the code which was repealed and replaced by a new code.

However, since the change was brought in through a notification, it would continue to apply to the 1973 code too, the judges held. The single judge had referred the matter to the Bench while hearing an anticipatory bail application filed by a person accused under Section 506 (1) of the IPC (Criminal intimidation).