India, Oct. 29 -- The Supreme Court on Wednesday held that failure to furnish written grounds of arrest cannot, by itself, become an automatic passport to bail, cancelling the bail granted to a man accused of espionage for allegedly transmitting sensitive military information to Pakistani intelligence handlers.

The ruling, however, appears to raise a difficult question in the court's own recent jurisprudence: whether a case-specific assessment of prejudice and substantial compliance can dilute a constitutional safeguard it declared mandatory in every criminal case.

A bench of justices MM Sundresh and Prasanna B Varale, in a judgment delivered on October 28, set aside the Rajasthan high court's order granting bail to Jhabra Ram, holding ...