The country’s overflowing prisons just got a little less crowded with nearly one lakh undertrial prisoners being freed on bail, that too in just three months. Of the over 1.7 lakh people booked for petty offences and kept in jail for years, many have been behind bars for longer than the maximum punishment for the offence had there been a conviction.
When law minister Veerappa Moily announced his ‘Mission Undertrial’ on January 16 to release or settle cases of 75% of prisoners facing trial for years for petty offences, many were sceptical of the idea while others termed it as a tall claim. He had fixed a six-month deadline for the scheme.
Surprisingly, Moily’s efforts in sensitizing state governments about violation of fundamental rights of these undertrial prisoners has yielded results. By April 31, nearly a lakh undertrials had either been released or their cases taken to the logical conclusion — conviction or acquittal — in just three months.
The highest number of prisoners, 29,009, was released in Uttar Pradesh accounting for almost one-third of the total. It was followed by Orissa (13,664), Andhra Pradesh (9,116), Delhi (8,701), Maharashtra (7,252), MP (6,252), Haryana (3,219), Gujarat (3,101), Karnataka (2,423), Kerala (2,334), Punjab (2,169), J&K (1,360) and Jharkhand (1,343).
The worst performing state in terms of releasing prisoners was West Bengal, which released only 287 of them and that too in February and none thereafter. Tamil Nadu also did not appear to be sensitive enough to the rights of prisoners as only 608 were released.
Under ‘Mission Undertrial’, Moily attempted to end traditional apathy towards undertrials by writing to chief justices of HCs requesting them to facilitate early release of these prisoners. The mission was launched on January 26, Law Day.
India has around 1,500 jails having a capacity to lodge 2.50 lakh prisoners, but they house close to 3.50 lakh inmates. As many as 70% of the jail population is made up of undertrials, around 2.45 lakh. As 70% of undertrials are booked for petty offences, this category in jails would be 1.70 lakh.
Moily said various ways were adopted to allow the languishing undertrials to get out of prison — plea bargaining system in which the undertrial accepts guilt and the court records conviction and releases him by sentencing him to a period of imprisonment already undergone, expediting their cases by holding trials on a day-to-day basis and holding court proceedings inside prison premises or through video-conferencing.
To ensure that there was no hitch from government, Moily divided the country into various zones and put an additional solicitor general in charge of it to ensure that the first actual legal reform — releasing undertrials — was successful.
Source:- TheTimes of India 11 June 2010 Page 11 Delhi
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