Supreme Court pulls up Centre for lack of initiative in releasing undertrials

Granting time till July, the Court directed the Centre to arrange an interaction with states and inform them about the progress made on the feasibility of carrying out the suggestion of the SC

The Supreme Court on Tuesday pulled up the Centre for not making any progress on a suggestion to unclutter jails and courts by having a policy at the national level to release persons involved in petty offences and whose trial will otherwise take years to decide.

The Court was dealing with a suo moto petition on “Policy Strategy for bail”. (Representative file image)

With the suggestion forming part of an order passed in February last year in a suo moto proceeding to unclutter jails, a bench headed by justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul noted with anguish that nothing had moved forward.

The union law ministry which was directed under the order to initiate discussions with the relevant authorities in the state and explore this possibility told the apex court that discussions with states are still on while nothing has “crystalized”.

Upset by this attitude, the bench, also comprising justices Ahsanuddin Amanullah and Aravind Kumar said, “The whole purpose behind our order was to help socially and economically disadvantaged persons who may not be accused in heinous crimes so that the jails and the criminal justice system can be uncluttered. Some initiative has to be shown by central government and states as courts can only give a push in this regard.”

Granting time till July, the Court directed the Centre to arrange an interaction with states and inform them about the progress made on the feasibility of carrying out the suggestion of the Court.

The Court further added that exploration of this idea may be limited to cases where persons are first time offenders, and no adverse conduct of the person is recorded by jail authorities.

“This is an out of the box thinking which is worth implementing. We have in mind the celebration of the 75 years of our independence whether release of persons in such cases can be identified simply on grounds of good behaviour saving them from the trial and punishment,” the bench said.

Additional solicitor general (ASG) KM Nataraj appearing for the union law ministry informed the Court that the work is in progress but being a subject of “law and order”, states have to come forward.

“There is no problem if a central policy has to be framed but states have to come forward. We have held some meetings, but a solution has not crystalised.”

The bench told the law officer that a year has gone by, and nothing seems to have moved forward.

“We are still at the same point when the order was passed. There can be a national policy by the Centre and states can come on board. We do not think any forward action has taken place on this.”

The Court was dealing with a suo moto petition on “Policy Strategy for bail” where the Court was monitoring progress across all high courts with regard to reducing burden on jails.

In this regard, the Court considered a variety of steps including premature release of undertrials under state policies, plea bargaining, compounding of offences (in cases of minor offences), and release of prisoners based on good conduct in jail.

In addition to these measures, the Court on February 9, 2022 had suggested a “possible alternate route” to achieve uncluttering of jails which required states and Centre to explore whether in cases where the maximum sentence is 7 years or less, and the persons have either served out half the sentence or pending trial have already gone through half the sentence, can be considered for a one-time settlement by which the cases could be closed without going through the rigors of trial.

The order came to be passed as the Court was aware that plea bargaining as a concept has not been successful as it requires the person accused to accept guilt in return for his freedom.

The Court assisted by advocates Gaurav Agarwal, Liz Mathew and Devansh Mohta as amici curiae (friends of court) submitted information with regard to aspects relating to e-prison software, premature release, expediting cases of undertrials for bail and premature release among other steps to reduce congestion in jails.

A report presented by Agarwal on behalf of the amici curiae showed that substantial work is being done by some high courts in identifying cases where early resolution of trial can be achieved, and such cases were dealt with by specified courts on a regular basis.

For instance, in Gujarat, 1428 cases were disposed by plea bargaining under Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), 604 cases were compounded under Section 320 CrPC, and 97 persons released under Probation of Offenders Act for good conduct.

In Uttar Pradesh, over 49,000 cases were compounded, as many as 2,203 disposed by plea bargaining and 821 released on good conduct.

More encouraging figures were from Madhya Pradesh where more than 45,000 cases were decided or disposed through these three methods.

These figures were presented in the report prepared by Agarwal updated as on February end.