Section 139:

139. Magistrate hearing a criminal case having previously dealt with an application for bail—At a certain stage of the proceedings, the Magistrates scheduled to start the trial, challenged themselves as they had earlier dealt with an application for bail by another accused. CON – 203 [Issue 1] The Constitution HELD the Court has never said that a Magistrate can never sit to hear the trial of a person charged with an offence if he or she has dealt with an application for bail by that person. Since an accused party is entitled, according to section 10 (1) of the Bail Act, to ask for bail owing to his continued detention or remand, it follows that, by invoking section 5 of the Constitution, for example, such a person may, strictly speaking, make an application for bail every time the case is postponed because he is not being afforded a trial within a reasonable time. If there was a strict rule applicable in the matter, an ingenious lawyer could thus try to go through the list of Magistrates with a series of bail applications. Seegoolam v State (1994).