Delhi High Court premises. (File photo)
The Delhi High Court Tuesday rapped Tihar authorities for illegally detaining a man in jail for 10 days despite a bail order in his favour, and sought to know on how many occasions in the past three years have inmates not been released within 24 hours of being granted bail by courts.
A bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Subramonium Prasad further directed the Director General (Prisons) to conduct an inquiry into the matter and file a status report within three weeks. The bench also directed that the report furnish details of the “number of occasions in the past three years when despite orders passed by the courts admitting persons in custody to bail, he/she was not released within 24 hours from the date of receipt of such orders, for reasons not attributable to the beneficiary of such an order”.
In this case, Sanjay Singh, the accused, was granted bail by the trial court on May 18 in a cheque bounce case but was released from jail only on the night of June 25. The information was revealed during the hearing of his habeas corpus petition before the High Court on June 26. Jail authorities, in an affidavit, said the release order of May 18 directed Singh to furnish bail bonds, surety, etc, for being admitted to bail but he was able to offer sureties only on June 15 and so, the period of his purported illegal detention would not commence from May 18, as alleged, but from June 15 to 25.
Noting this, the bench sought an explanation from jail authorities over the illegal detention of the accused. O P Pandey, posted as Superintendent of Central Jail-I in Tis Hazari, filed an affidavit. The bench said, “We place on record our deep dissatisfaction with the explanation offered or rather the lack of explanation offered by the jail authorities for unlawfully detaining the petitioner between June 15 and 25.” “How often bail orders of trial courts have been misinterpreted wrongly. People have been detained in jail after bail bonds. You are setting a law on yourself, because you are jail authorities…,” and rejected the apology tendered by jail authorities.