Bail might seem like a minor procedural issue for a constitutional court to weigh in on, but the reality of the Indian criminal legal system is such that bail is often the beginning, middle, and end of any case. The latest available prison statistics, from 2020, released by the government, indicate that 76.1% of all the prison inmates in India are undertrials. These are people who have never been found guilty of any crime. They have, in fact, never even had their day in court. The vast majority are likely to be eligible for bail.
Bail isn’t a matter of undue solicitousness to a criminal class. A foundational plank of civilised society is that we do not punish people without due process of law. Unless we seriously think that every person who is charged with a crime is guilty of that crime – and if we do, why have criminal trials at all – we should be concerned that lakhs of people who may be innocent are being held in prison for years.
Bail petitions are not frivolous or extraneous or a waste of time. As Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud said, seemingly in response to Rijiju: “No case is small for the Supreme Court as it has the duty to interfere in matters of personal liberty”.
by Sunishth Goyal & Ananda Burra
19/12/2022