BAIL OR JAIL?
28 PER CENT ACCUSED OF ANY OFFENCE GET BAIL IN INDIA
69 PER CENT OR 330,487 OF THE 478,600 PRISONERS ARE UNDERTRIALS
51 PER CENT NO. OF UNDERTRIALS LODGED IN DISTRICT JAILS
22 PER CENT UNDERTRIALS LODGED IN UP, THE HIGHEST SHARE AMONG ALL STATES
36 PER CENT UNDERTRIALS CONFINED FOR MORE THAN A YEAR
5,011 UNDERTRIALS WHO HAVE BEEN LODGED IN JAILS FOR MORE THAN FIVE YEARS
Sources: 268th report of National Law Commission, Prison Statistics India, 2019
ARYAN KHAN, THE 23-YEAR-OLD SON OF SUPERSTAR SHAH RUKH KHAN, may think his plight to be miserable. On October 3, he was arrested under the stringent Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, for his alleged ‘involvement in consumption, sale and purchase’ of drugs. Yet, when a special court rejected his plea for bail—17 days after his arrest—his case attracted massive public attention, and the court’s exercise of its discretion became a subject of intense debate. Backed by a strong legal team, Aryan managed to get an urgent hearing in the Bombay High Court on October 26, rare in such cases. There are others who have worse experiences to narrate.
Contrast the fate of Chunni Lal Gaba, the 72-year-old multimillionaire businessman from Punjab. Arrested in 2014 for his alleged involvement in a drug racket, Gaba had to move the Supreme Court this June as his request for hearing his bail plea had been pending in the Punjab & Haryana High Court for nearly 17 months. Shocked at the development, the apex court observed: ‘Non-listing of application for regular bail, irrespective of seriousness or lack thereof, of the offences attributed to the accused, impinges upon the liberty of the person in custody.’
Likewise, comedian Munawar Faruqui, who was arrested for cracking jokes that allegedly hurt religious sentiments, had to be in jail for over a month because the sessions court and Madhya Pradesh High Court rejected his bail pleas. Eventually, the Supreme Court granted him bail, saying that the allegations were ‘vague’ and the police ‘did not follow the procedure’ in arresting him without preliminary investigation.
And it’s not just high-profile or drug-related cases. In March 2020, a Surat court acquitted 127 men of charges of terrorism, 20 years after their arrest! In 2014, the Supreme Court acquitted six people of the 2002 Akshardham terror attack charges after they had served a decade in prison.
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