The Madras High Court on Wednesday disapproved of the practice of the police officials fixing certain first time offenders and slapping cases of similar nature against them at regular intervals for statistical purposes and thereby not allowing those persons to get into the mainstream of the society.
Justice N. Anand Venkatesh made the observation while granting bail to an individual who was facing as many as four criminal cases on identical charges of eating food in road side eateries, refusing to pay money for the food and instead robbing small amounts of money from the eateries at knife point.
“The State is facing a very unfortunate scenario where the police apparently, for statistical purposes, are repeatedly registering FIRs of the same nature against certain persons and ensures that those persons never will get into the main stream of the society. This senseless action goes against the very concept of reformation in criminal law.
“By registering such mechanical FIRs, the police is only trying to maintain its statistics for the purpose of showing to the outside world, the effectiveness of criminal justice system that is prevailing in the State. Every time it comes before this court, this court keeps passing mechanical orders of granting bail to the accused persons,” the judge said.
Pointing out that cases of similar nature were being filed within a gap a 20 days after grant of bail in the first case, Justice Venkatesh said: “This is an absolute abuse on the entire criminal justice system. It is with pain that this court is recording its anguish in this order. This court only hopes that this attitude changes.
“Unless this is done, the entire criminal justice system in the State will collapse.”