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The Supreme Court’s April 2 ruling in the Grand Venice case deserves attention for a reason larger than the buyer-builder dispute before it. A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and N.K. Singh cancelled the bail earlier granted to Satinder Singh Bhasin. The Court directed him to surrender within a week. It said he may apply for regular bail afresh only after twelve months and only after fully complying with orders passed in the insolvency proceedings. It also ordered forfeiture of the entire Rs 50 crore deposit along with accrued interest.

The operative effect of this direction is a moratorium on future bail. The court declines liberty for the present but fixes the architecture of the next bail attempt. The future application is neither left wholly open-ended nor shut forever. It is postponed to a defined review point. In the Grand Venice ruling, that review point is twelve months plus compliance with insolvency orders. In other cases, it may be tied to witness examination or some later stage of trial.

The builder case is especially significant because it arose in a cancellation setting. The Supreme Court had granted bail on November 6, 2019 on express conditions. One condition required the petitioner to make every possible attempt to settle the claims of the complainants within six to eight months. Another required a deposit of Rs 50 crore as a precondition for bail. Over the following years, the court repeatedly recorded that the petitioner had not made genuine efforts toward settlement. As recently as January 2025, it observed that unless every investor’s claim was resolved, bail could not continue.

In the April 2 judgment, the court held squarely that those conditions had not been complied with. That finding became the hinge for cancellation. The forfeiture order........

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