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Must expedite conclusion of trials under special laws: Supreme Court

ByAbraham Thomas, New Delhi
Apr 01, 2023 05:22 AM IST

The appellant in the present case had been in custody for 7 years and 4 months.

Trials involving special laws with stringent bail provisions must be concluded speedily, the Supreme Court said in a recent judgment and directed courts to be sensitive to the fact that incarceration has deleterious effects on undertrials and if the trial is not concluded in time, the injustice inflicted on the individual is immeasurable.

Trials involving special laws with stringent bail provisions must be concluded speedily, the Supreme Court said. (ANI)
Trials involving special laws with stringent bail provisions must be concluded speedily, the Supreme Court said. (ANI)

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The judgment of the court pronounced on Tuesday came on an appeal for bail filed by an accused under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act who was behind bars for the past 7 years while the trial proceeded at snail’s pace.

Granting bail to the accused Mohammad Muslim alias Hussain, a bench of justices S Ravindra Bhat and Dipankar Datta said, “Incarceration has further deleterious effects – where the accused belongs to the weakest economic strata: immediate loss of livelihood, and in several cases, scattering of families as well as loss of family bonds and alienation from society.”

The judgment further said, “The courts therefore have to be sensitive to these aspects and ensure that trials – especially in cases where special laws enact stringent provisions are taken up and concluded speedily.”

In the present case the accused was arrested in 2015 from Delhi and was alleged to be part of a gang that supplied ganja. Although the contraband was not seized from him but other co-accused, the Delhi police prosecuting the case accused him of being part of a “drug peddling network” with his active involvement in the commission of the offence being established through call records and bank transactions.

Additional solicitor general (ASG) Vikramjeet Banerjee cited Section 37 of the NDPS Act which places stringent conditions on grant of bail. This provision is akin to the stringent conditions on bail provided under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act where the court should be satisfied that there are reasonable grounds to believe the accused is innocent and is not likely to commit any offence while on bail. The ASG argued for his continued custody as the “public interest” in preventing the sale and use of illegal drugs outweighed the concerns regarding the individual liberty of the accused.

Refusing to accept the prosecution’s objections, the top court said, “Laws which impose stringent conditions for grant of bail may be necessary in public interest, yet, if trials are not concluded in time, the injustice wreaked on the individual is immeasurable.”

The court referred to past judgments of the Supreme Court where it was held that Section 436A of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) – which requires the accused to be released on bail if the trial is not concluded with specified periods – would apply to Section 37 NDPS as well.

The appellant in the present case had been in custody for 7 years and 4 months. Although the charge sheet in the case was filed in 2016, 34 out of 64 witnesses were yet to be examined. The bench said, “Grant of bail on ground of undue delay in trial cannot be said to be fettered by Section 37 of the Act, given the imperative of Section 436A which is applicable to offences under the NDPS Act too... the appellant is directed to be enlarged on bail, subject to such conditions as the trial court may impose.”

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The court further noted that jails are overcrowded and persons in jail have to bear with appalling living conditions. “The danger of unjust imprisonment is that inmates are at risk of prisonisation,” said the bench, borrowing the term ‘prisonisation’ from a 1993 Kerala high court decision which discussed the radical transformation that takes place in a prisoner.

Quoting statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) Prison Statistics 2021, the bench said that out of 554,034 prisoners (as on December 31, 2021), the population of undertrials is 427,165 with the remaining being convicts and detenues. The undertrial population recorded an increase of nearly 15% from the previous year as their population was 371,848 at the end of 2020.

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