Use web service to send bail orders, says court registrar

Prisoners who have been acquitted or granted bail, but continue to live in jail because of pending paperwork, may have reasons to cheer.

Prisoners who have been acquitted or granted bail, but continue to live in jail because of pending paperwork, may have reasons to cheer.

HT Image

The high court registrar (Legal and Research), Nijamoddin Jamdar, while responding to a public interest litigation concerning illegally detained prisoners, suggested replacing the current practice of snail mail communication of acquittal and bail orders with a 'web-based service'. He said this service would link all the district courts, thereby solving the problem of illegal detentions.

"In a web-based service, each district court can be given a login id and password to a module where all the acquittal and bail orders could be uploaded and placed," Jamdar states.

He added that the high court's Case Management Information System (CMIS), where emails are sent to various police stations and district police headquarters, could be extended to prisons as well.

The high court had, last month, directed the registrar to file a reply on the contentions raised by petitioners Unique Juris Forum, an NGO run by advocates. Their advocate, Anjali Waghmare, had contended that even if the accused are acquitted or released on bail, the delay in communicating the same from the court to jail authorities results in illegal detention, where the accused might be entitled for compensation.

"Since a variety of correspondence is handled by the dispatch clerks, they often do not segregate matters that need to be attended to urgently, unless specified" the affidavit states.