Upset over Uttar Pradesh’s failure to consider release of prisoners languishing in jail for over a decade either on bail or on pre-mature release, the Supreme Court on Monday asked the state to decide on their release or face a blanket order of bail from the court.
“If you are unable to handle it, we will take it upon ourselves and handle it,” said a bench of justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and MM Sundresh on being told that there are 853 cases where persons have been in custody for more than 10 years and their criminal appeals have not been decided.
The court asked additional advocate general (AAG) Garima Parshad how many among the 853 were single offence cases that could be considered on priority for bail. Parshad told the court that the state was yet to scrutinise the list and segregate single offence offenders from those facing multiple cases. Posting the matter for August 17, the bench said, “Two weeks’ time is granted to the state. Let a list be filed of the 853 cases with the serial numbers, time period spent in custody and in which of these cases the state is opposing the bail and the grounds for the same.”
Finding such a large number of prisoners who are incarcerated with neither their appeal nor bail application been decided by the high court at Allahabad and Lucknow bench, the Supreme Court bench said, “Having laid down norms it should not take weeks to dispose of these applications….We will pass a blanket order granting bail.”
{{/usCountry}}Finding such a large number of prisoners who are incarcerated with neither their appeal nor bail application been decided by the high court at Allahabad and Lucknow bench, the Supreme Court bench said, “Having laid down norms it should not take weeks to dispose of these applications….We will pass a blanket order granting bail.”
{{/usCountry}}On May 9, when the matter was last heard, the court was told by the state and the Allahabad high court that in UP jails, the bail pleas of 350 convicts are pending for over a decade and 159 are such who have been incarcerated for more than 15 years.
Last week, the high court filed yet another status report in the top court informing that since the time of filing of the earlier affidavit in April till July 17, out of 350, only 62 bail applications remain to be decided. However, it informed that 232 fresh bail applications have been filed during this period.
According to the high court’s latest report, there are 853 cases pending of criminal appeals where person in custody has spent over 10 years. To enable further decongestion of prisons, the bench allowed the state to even consider permanent parole for persons who were aged less than 60 years.
The orders passed on Monday came on a bail plea filed by a person called Suleman who has remained in jail for 12 years with no bench available in the high court to take up his criminal appeal. The petitioner highlighted the grim reality of UP’s jails by pointing out the case of other prisoners, worse off than him, who have been languishing in jail for more than 15 years without bail.
In the last order, the bench observed, “What is of concern to us is cases which are pending for 10 years and 14 years in appeal, where bail applications are also pending and some of them are in incarceration even without pending bail applications as they may have been disposed of.”
The state has a remission policy in place by which those persons charged of single offence cases are referred for remission after 14 years of actual incarceration and 20 years with remission. The bench suggested to the state to consider taking up single offence cases in one go by taking a stand in respect of such cases where persons are languishing for over 10 years, and unless there are special circumstances, all of them could even be enlarged on bail.
It was following this order the state came with the latest figures but the road map to deal with such cases was lacking.