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‘Cannot curtail liberty’: SC raps UP over delay in inmates’ release
The bench pulled up the state for adopting a “regressive” approach in opposing bail indiscriminately in a host of criminal cases, without paying heed either to the period of incarceration, or the possibility of such cases getting decided in the near future.
Nobody’s liberty should be curtailed unless there are strong reasons to do so, the Supreme Court said on Monday, while asking the Uttar Pradesh government to quickly devise a mechanism to release inmates languishing behind bars for several years, awaiting disposal of their appeals.
“You cannot curtail the liberty of a person unless you have some strong grounds to do so. Bail is a rule. Jail is an exception and it should remain an exception,” a bench of justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and MM Sundresh observed.
The bench pulled up the state for adopting a “regressive” approach in opposing bail indiscriminately in a host of criminal cases, without paying heed either to the period of incarceration, or the possibility of such cases getting decided in the near future.
“In a state where the problem is the largest and there are so many cases, instead of taking a dynamic approach, you take a rather regressive approach. There are appeals that are not getting heard and you are opposing bails in all cases. In the Allahabad high court, appeals from 1980s are still pending, and you don’t want people to come out bail too,” the bench told the state government’s additional advocate general Garima Prasad.
The idea cannot be that everyone should remain behind bars forever, emphasised the court, adding the law officers of the state must communicate the court’s message to the concerned officers in the government.
“Yours is a big state. You have to do something to resolve it. We don’t want an aggravated situation where we have to summon the law secretary or the home secretary. It is good for you to do this on your own,” said the bench as it dealt with a clutch of cases from the state where accused and convicts remained behind bars for more than 14 years without bail or remission.
The court asked Prasad that the state government should categorise cases where they must oppose the bail. “We can understand if there are multiple offences and repeat offenders...there could be bomb blast cases or other terror cases where you can have objections. But this cannot be your stand in every case,” it added.
At this point, justice Sundresh shared a personal anecdote. “There was an advocate general who would appear at the beginning of the court. If there are 20 matters of bail, he would say he is opposing bail in two or three real matters and that the court could grant bail in the rest... Jail terms will become meaningless if you don’t take a holistic approach,” the judge told Prasad.
The court also demanded the presence of the state’s advocate general to apprise it of the status of compliance with February 25 order, when the bench asked the state to prepare a mechanism in consultation with the chief justice of the Allahabad high court for releasing the inmates.
By this order, the court had asked the state government and the high court to prepare two separate lists of cases where the accused have served out 14 years and 10 years in jail, respectively, without being granted bail or receiving consideration for the remission of sentence under the premature release policy of the state.
In all the appropriate cases, bail can be granted in one go, the bench directed on February 25.
While granting bail to 18 life convicts from Uttar Pradesh in a summary proceeding that lasted less than 20 minutes, the bench on that day commented that only the underprivileged languish in jail whereas people of high society manage to flee the country.
