Supreme Court orders States/UTs to provide copy of verdicts on remission to convicts soon after passing of judgment
The Supreme Court has ordered all State governments and Union Territories to ensure that as soon as the court decided on whether to grant remission (premature release from prison) to a convict, a copy of the decision was made available to the prisoner.
The Bench of Justice Abhay S Oka and Justice Augustine George Masih
passed the order on Tuesday on a suo motu public interest litigation petition regarding the grant of bail in cases where appeals of convicts against their conviction have remained pending for a long time.
Noting that it was necessary to make the prisoners aware of their right to challenge an order rejecting a remission plea, the Apex Court asked the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) to come up with suggestions on making immediate legal aid available to prisoners in such cases.
The Apex Court asked NALSA to devise a way through which the rejection orders could be communicated to individual prisoners in the shortest possible time.
Wondering whether there was any direction by this Court in which manner should the rejection be communicated, the Bench said if there was no such directive, it may pass directions for the same.
The Apex Court, while noting that even the NALSA guidelines did not mention anything on this front, said the legal services authority should let prisoners know that they could challenge these cases of rejection.
In its previous orders, the Apex Court laid out a procedure to dispose of in one go, all bail applications and appeals in such cases, along with instances involving a single offence.
Further, the top court called for enlarging the accused on bail in long pending cases unless there existed special circumstances for not doing so.
Amicus Curiae in the case and Senior Advocate Liz Mathew on Tuesday took the Apex Court through compliance reports submitted by various States on the processing of premature release applications.
The Bench passed directions in respect of prisoners in Manipur, Assam and West Bengal.
Earlier, the Apex Court had emphasised that jailmates who have completed at least 10 years of sentence and whose appeals were not likely to be heard anytime soon, should be enlarged on bail, provided there were no other extenuating circumstances.
The top court of the country directed all States to issue directions to jail authorities to provide data on undertrials languishing behind bars due to the non-fulfilment of bail conditions.
The Apex Court had earlier granted liberty to local courts to suo motu consider relaxing bail conditions in cases where bail bonds had not been furnished by the accused for over a month1
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