Chief Justice of India Dr D Y Chandrachud hit all the right notes earlier this week when he said -- in no uncertain terms -- that “the right to personal liberty is a precious and inalienable right recognised by the Constitution” and that when it comes to issues of personal liberty, no case is too small for the Supreme Court.
The comments came on Friday when the bench headed by the Chief Justice was hearing a plea of a convict who was caught stealing electricity and was “shockingly” sentenced to 18 years imprisonment after the trial court decided that his sentences would run consecutively and not concurrently as is usually the norm. That such a case needed to go all the way up the Supreme Court in search of justice is in itself quite telling about the state of the country’s legal system.
In his comments while deciding the case the Chief Justice made it clear that “the Supreme Court performs a plain constitutional duty, obligation and function; no more and no less to exercise its jurisdiction as a protector of the fundamental right to life and personal liberty inherent in every citizen. Personal liberty, which is the most important of all liberties as guaranteed by the constitution has for long been waylaid in this country, by authorities at all levels. It is more recognisable in times when we have a both the media and the “collective consciousness” of society behaving like a vigilante lynch mob and hounding individual citizens who barely have a fair shot at a fair trial.
As per the constitution the lowly judicial magistrate forms the bulwark of personal liberty. No police officer or any other government agency can detain a person beyond 24-hours unless the magistrate permits him to do so after the accused is produced before him. In deciding the police’s request for remand, the magistrate has to examine everything from the legality of the arrest to the justification for the arrest before deciding the remand application.
However, too often we see the magistrates performing their task routinely, and more often than not deciding in favour of the police application rather than whether the arrest was justified or not, thereby leaving constitutional protections by the wayside. We have seen in many cases -- especially high profile ones -- that even cases based on flimsy evidence not only is police custody granted at liberty, even bail is denied, sometimes forcing the case right up to the Supreme Court. Undertrials are languishing in jail for terms even longer than they would be even if they were to be convicted of the crime. This at a time when the prisons are overflowing with undertrials who have been denied bail or with those who have been granted bail but cannot provide the sureties necessary for their release.
The Chief Justice’s comments should serve as an important reminder to authorities at all levels -- that personal liberty should not be trifled with -- both in principle and in practice. Not only do our jails, but also our courts need declogging -- and the solution to is not to discourage courts from taking up these cases -- as the Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju seemed to suggest, in remarks made in Parliament, but rather to decide cases in favour of personal liberty, especially those involving non-serious crime.
It is also important that the government gives serious thought to a standalone ‘bail law’ that will codify several of the many judgements concerning bail that have been delivered by the Supreme Court.
