BREAKING| Delhi Court Denies Michael Ashish Mukherjee Anticipatory Bail In Fake Charlie Kirk Email Case

Rejecting the pre-arrest bail plea, Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Hargurvarinder Singh Jaggi observed: "Evaluating the case against established legal principles, the applicant's prayer for anticipatory bail is wholly devoid of merit. Firstly, the allegations transcend standard domestic friction and involve a highly sophisticated, vindictive, and perilous cybercrime with international ramifications."

The FIR was registered on the complaint of Prateek Paul, a Ph.D. scholar at Columbia University, who alleged that the accused, amid an ongoing matrimonial dispute with his sister, impersonated him by creating fake email accounts and sent fabricated emails to the FBI, the US Department of Justice, USCIS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), falsely confessing in his name to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The emails allegedly included copies of the complainant's passport, visa and New York ID, following which officials from the US Department of Homeland Security visited his residence in New York.

The prosecution opposed anticipatory bail, arguing that custodial interrogation was necessary to recover the electronic devices allegedly used in the commission of the offences. It also submitted that the accused had deliberately avoided joining the investigation despite notice and that responses from Google LLC, Microsoft Corporation and Proton AG were awaited to trace the alleged cyber conspiracy.

The State further contended that Mukherjee had suppressed a material fact by failing to disclose that the Delhi High Court had found him guilty of contempt and issued non-bailable warrants against him in separate proceedings.

Agreeing with the prosecution, the court held that custodial interrogation remained indispensable, observing: "Custodial interrogation is strictly required for the recovery of the specific digital devices used to transmit the fabricated confessions, and shielding the applicant with pre-arrest bail would practically guarantee the destruction of these digital footprints."

The court also found that the applicant's conduct disentitled him to the discretionary relief of anticipatory bail, observing: "It is a well-settled principle of law that any suppression, concealment, or selective disclosure of material facts amounts to an abuse of the process of law and strikes at the very root of the administration of criminal justice."

The judge further noted that the accused had not only evaded the investigation but had also concealed the Delhi High Court's contempt judgment and the issuance of non-bailable warrants while seeking anticipatory bail before the Sessions Court. The order stated: "Such deliberate concealment of severe criminal antecedents and prior judicial strictures to secure discretionary relief cannot be countenanced by this Court."

Consequently, the court declined to grant anticipatory bail to Mukherjee, clarifying that the observations were confined to adjudicating the bail application and would not affect the merits of the trial.