NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Thursday said the much-reiterated ‘bail is the rule and jail is the exception’ principle attaching importance to personal liberty of undertrial prisoners did not extend to hardened criminals and gangsters accused of committing multiple heinous offences.
“The biggest challenge for prosecution in this country is to bring witnesses to the court to depose against gangsters and hardened criminals. Witnesses fear for their lives and that of their family members,” a bench of Justices Surya Kant and N K Singh said.
“As the police are still not using modern scientific methods to investigate crimes, absence of witness depositions before the trial court results in either the case dragging on for years, the accused getting bail and even leading to their acquittal,” the bench said while rejecting advocate Ashok Panigrahi’s arguments for grant of bail to a notorious gangster from Odisha who is facing multiple murder charges.
When Panigrahi argued that the crimes (two murders) happened in 2016 and that the accused had been in jail for almost nine years, state counsel Somraj Choudhury, taking a cue from the bench’s observations, told the court that the accused, Sushanta Kumar Dhalasamanta, was accused in more than 40 criminal cases and that witnesses were scared to appear in court to depose against him.
The bench found the assertion unfortunate and said, “If a state govt tells SC that witnesses are fearful of deposing in a trial court against a gangster, it reveals a worrisome aspect – the state is not able to provide adequate protection to witnesses despite the statutory mandate in this regard.” Rejecting Dhalasamanta’s bail plea, the bench said in a lighter vein that it would be in the interest of the accused to remain in jail as if he came out, he could be bumped off by a rival. “You, like all other notorious criminals, must be getting all facilities from the jail staff,” it added. The bench said, “If the allegations of prosecution that he is a notorious gangster facing more than 40 cases involving heinous offences is true, then it would not be in the interest of society to release him on bail.”
The bench asked the trial court to hold proceedings twice a month in the case against Dhalasamanta and requested the supervising HC judge to monitor the progress in trial to ensure that it was completed within a year. It also directed the prosecution to provide security to witnesses to persuade them to depose fearlessly before the court. “If the prosecution fails to do so, the trial judge would report this to the supervising HC judge, who would intervene to ensure protection to witnesses,” the bench said.