Delhi High Court directed district courts to strictly implement Supreme Court directions on granting bail to undertrials held in prolonged custody. The case involved an accused who had spent more than one-third of a seven-year sentence in jail.
The Delhi High Court directed all district courts, prison authorities, and the Delhi District Legal Services Authorities to strictly follow the Supreme Court’s directions on releasing first-time offenders who have already served more than one-third of their maximum possible sentence in jail.
Justice Girish Kathpalia observed that accused persons are continuing to languish in custody even after spending a period of at least one-third and sometimes even more than the maximum duration they could be sentenced to.
The High Court stated that the authorities must ensure strict compliance with the Supreme Court’s directions relating to Section 479 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), which allows conditional release of certain accused persons held in prolonged custody.
It directed,
“A copy of this order be sent to all Principal District and Sessions Judges as well as the Director General (Prisons), Delhi with the directions to ensure strict compliance of the above mentioned directions of the Supreme Court [in the case of In Re:- Inhuman Conditions in 1382 Prisons]. A copy of this order be also sent to the Secretary, DHCLSC as well as to the Member Secretary, DLSA with the directions to take up such matters so that directions of the Supreme Court in this regard are complied with, in the letter and spirit,”
The Court was hearing a bail application filed by one Rishabh, who is accused of cheating a woman and her daughter.
The prosecution alleged that Rishabh repeatedly impersonated a person named Shaurya in order to obtain money from the mother-daughter duo.
Rishabh’s counsel argued that he is entitled to bail in line with the Supreme Court’s directions concerning undertrial prisoners in its 2013 judgment titled ‘In Re:- Inhuman Conditions in 1382 Prisons’.
In that case, the Supreme Court directed that first-time offenders should be granted bail if they have spent one-third of the maximum imprisonment as undertrials.
The Delhi High Court accepted the argument, noting that Section 479 of the BNSS requires bail to be granted in such situations.
It said,
“Admittedly, the accused/applicant is a first time offender and has never been convicted of any offence in the past. The accused/applicant has spent more than 1/3rd of the maximum imposable sentence of 07 years incarceration in jail, so Section 479 BNSS comes into play,”
The Court also raised concerns about the investigation, pointing out that the investigating officer had allegedly attempted to mislead it by incorrectly attributing incriminating audio recordings of a co-accused to Rishabh.
The Court said,
“At the outset, I must deprecate conduct on the part of the investigating agency in this case, as misleading status report,”
The Court further questioned the failure to arrest co-accused Nitin, who was alleged to have impersonated a CBI official to dupe the victims. Observing that five accused persons were involved, the Court noted that only Rishabh had been arrested so far, and said the Delhi Police had not offered an explanation for this disparity.
It added,
“Of course, it is the prerogative of the investigator to arrest or not to arrest an accused. But in the factual matrix of the present kind, such conduct on the part of the investigating agency raises unanswered questions, to say the least,”
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The High Court also considered that charges against Rishabh had not yet been framed and that further investigation was still ongoing. On the basis of these circumstances, the Court granted bail to the accused.
Senior Advocate Amit Chadha appeared for the accused along with advocates Kunal Sharma, Puneet Rathor, Mohit Singh, Atin Chadha, M Chadha, Harjas Singh, Rekha Yadav, A Singh and Ankush Sharma.
Additional Public Prosecutor Amit Ahlawat appeared for the State, while Advocates Deepak Tiwari and Saksham Upadhyay appeared for the complainant.