Encourage bail & not jail: SC to trial courts

Encourage bail & not jail: SC to trial courts

‘Despite Several Orders, Courts Denying Relief’

AmitAnand.Choudhary@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:17.12.2021

Observing that if there are hundreds of reasons for denying bail then there are also hundreds of reasons for granting it, the Supreme Court on Thursday expressed concern over trial courts showing reluctance in granting relief despite various directions to encourage bail. The mindset of such courts needs to change, the SC said.

The apex court, in a slew of orders, held personal liberty as an important aspect of constitutional mandate and that arrests should not be done in a routine manner when the accused is cooperating in a probe and there is no reason to believe that the person will abscond or influence investigations.

The court had in October passed guidelines as per which if an accused had cooperated in the investigation — and was not arrested during the probe — then s/he should not be taken into custody at the time of filing of chargesheet.

It held that a trial court cannot also refuse to accept a chargesheet simply because the accused had not been arrested and produced before the court.

Noting that the guidelines were not followed by trial courts, a bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and M M Sundresh said the signal that the Supreme Court wanted to send has not reached and lower courts remained apprehensive in granting bail.

Mindset is to find a way to deny bail: SC bench

The SC bench said, “The idea was to encourage bail and not the reverse but it is not happening... It is all about mindset. But the mindset is to find a way to deny bail. It has to be changed.”

The court said it is troubling that courts are spending substantial time in deciding only bail matters instead of main issues and cases which should have been decided by high courts reach the SC. The bench said the result is that the top court is flooded with bail petitions. “The endeavour was to reduce the bail application but it has, in fact, increased,” the bench said.

“It cannot be that everybody has to be put behind bars in every case. Bail should be encouraged and not jail,” the bench said, noting that investigation goes on for years and during that period people should not languish in jail, which also causes overcrowding in prisons.

It further said the investigating agencies lack sufficient manpower to conduct probes in a time-bound manner and there is also a lack of infrastructure, like paucity of labs, resulting in inordinate delays.

“In those circumstances, we have to take a call on the issue as the probe goes on for years,” the bench said. The apex court had in October issued guidelines for different categories of offences.

Full report on www.toi.in

Times View

Many undertrials languish in jail for years awaiting trial. Our judicial system functions on presumption of innocence unless proven guilty. Such a state of affairs turns this principle on its head. The apex court is right in its approach. A comprehensive order detailing the guidelines could go a long way in ameliorating the problem.