India’s supreme court has formulated a set of guidelines directing lower courts to release on bail all accused whose trials were pending for one year or more for offences attracting imprisonment up to three years and who had already spent six months to one year in jail, Similarly, if for offences the imprisonment provided is five years or more but the trial had been pending for two years or more and the accused had been in jail for six months, he may be released on personal bond. Again, in cases where the punishment is for seven years and the case had been pending for two years and the accused had spent one year in jail, he may be released on personal bond, In cases of traffic offences pending for two years or more because of no service of summons to the accused, the accused may be discharged and the cases closed. These directions do not cover the cases pertaining to charges under TADA, corruption, smuggling and foreign exchange regulations or offences under the Arms Act and Explosives Act. In these cases, the lower courts have been ordered to try the cases expeditiously and on priority basis. The Court declared that it would not allow criminal prosecution in the country to operate as “engines of oppression.”
As a result of the court’s guidelines, several thousand under trial prisoners in India are likely to be released on bail or otherwise in the next few weeks. To that extent the court’s intention not to permit criminal prosecution to become engines of oppression would stand realized. But in several thousand other cases, particularly those registered under TADA, Arms Act or the Explosives Act, the prisoners have only been assured of speedy trial. In the first instance, it will not materially change the situation because the lower courts are slow to react to directions fixing no specific timeframe. Even where timeframe has been provided, the lower courts have to rely for speedy trials on the cooperation of the prosecution agencies which generally take their own time. But what are the lower courts expected to do where the prosecution agencies have not brought up cases for trial before the courts? In such cases, the Supreme Court should have issued proper guidelines not merely to let off prisoners on bail but to discharge the cases against them. The cases of these varieties essentially political in nature and the victims mostly happen to be Sikhs and Muslims.
The endemic delays in India’s prosecution system are caused by the widespread lethargy and corruption in all spheres of politics and administration. The system turned particularly alarming in the past five years when the country had the misfortune of having a person like Narasimha Rao as its prime minister. This man is not only deeply involved in corruption or is one with the corrupt but is also given to status quo, a Brahmanical philosophy that does not believe in any change whatever. Moreover, Rao. Officially. Permitted the security. Agencies to eliminate suspects rather than trying them for specific offences, the country’s prosecutors nearly forgot to do any home work with the result that investigations did not take off all these years. The Supreme Court has done well to fill the vacuum caused by Rao’s misrule and non-rule but its promise not to allow prosecution system to become engines of oppression is still a far cry from reality.
Article extracted from this publication >>May 8, 1996
