SC pulls up UP jail dept for violating liberty of a person; orders to pay ' Rs 5 lakh to man detained for month despite bail
NEW DELHI: Lambasting the UP prisons department for illegally detaining a man for 28 days despite his release on bail, Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the state to pay an interim compensation of Rs 5 lakh to him and ordered a judicial inquiry into lapses on the part of Ghaziabad jail officials.
Taking a hyper-technical approach - the bail order mentioned Section 5 instead of Section 5(1) of UP Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act and the same typo was repeated in the additional sessions and district judge's release order of May 27 - jail authorities had refused to release Aftab, who had converted to Hinduism to marry a Hindu girl.
With the director general (prisons) logged on virtually to the proceedings and jail superintendent Sitaram Sharma present in the courtroom, a bench of Justices K V Viswanathan and N Kotiswar Singh said, "The whole incident to say the least is unfortunate.
Each one of the stakeholders in the process was aware as to what the offence was, what the crime number was and the sections under which the man was charged with and the punishment section.
"
Noting that Aftab was released on Tuesday only after the SC took umbrage to denial of liberty based on a hyper-technicality, the bench said, "Aftab was sent on a spin and notwithstanding the order of the SC of April 29 (order of a bench headed by the CJI), and the release order of May 27 (by additional sessions and district judge), which is clear to us as daylight, the applicant has been released only on June 24.
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"Liberty is a very valuable and precious right guaranteed to a person under the Constitution. It cannot be martyred on these useless technicalities. We only hope that no other convict or undertrial is languishing in jail on account of similar technicalities. The DG (prisons) has assured us that no one will suffer because of such technicality in future and that he will sensitise the entire jail staff." The bench noted that UP prisons had 90,000 inmates.
The SC asked the Ghaziabad district judge to complete the inquiry into the episode by Aug 18 and told the DG (prisons) to understand and implement the need to respect court orders and sensitise jail staff about the importance of liberty to ensure such incidents are not repeated.
The bench said if it found from the inquiry that jail officials were at fault for delay in Aftab's release despite valid bail orders, it would impose cost on individual officers.
It asked the UP govt to pay the compensation of Rs 5 lakh by Friday.
UP's advocate general Garima Prasad informed the court that jail authorities had moved the trial court on May 28 for correction in the released order to include Section 5(1) of the anti-conversion law, but the trial court did so only on June 24, following which Aftab was released on Tuesday evening.
The SC asked the state not to look for typographical errors in matters relating to liberty and said, "Otherwise, we (judges) in the SC will be doing proof-reading while most of the country will be behind bars."
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