SC shows Article 21 candle in dark lane with bail to Kejriwal
Image credit X.com @arvindKejriwal
SC’s right to liberty test contrasts with one lakh jailed undertrials
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, September 13: The Supreme Court on Friday brought curtains on five-month-long incarceration of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. The apex court ruled that a prolonged incarceration of Kejriwal is a violation of the freedom of liberty and also the rights under Article 21.
The apex court judgment in Kejriwal’s bail plea has potential to end the extended incarceration of political activists. The alleged Delhi Excise Scam, for all practical purposes, was restricted to arresting the political activists and jailing them.
In 15 months that former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia spent in the Tihar Jail, the cases against him hardly saw progress in the trial court. Kejriwal spent five months in Tihar Jail with no trial in sight.
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The Supreme Court noted that most of the accused in the Delhi Excise case had already been out of jail. The list included the accused Sisodia, the Rajya Sabha MP of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Sanjay Singh, the Bharath Rashtra Samithi leader K. Kavitha, and former aide of Kejriwal, Vijay Nair.
“…continued incarceration for the Appellant’s arrest for an extended period pending trial would infringe upon established legal practices and Appellant’s right to liberty, traceable to Article 21,” the apex court said in its order.
The Supreme Court as per legal luminaries has now almost built a firewall against the recent episodes of political leaders languishing in jails for extended tenures after their arrests under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Also Read: Congress girds up for Haryana ‘Dangal’
The amended PMLA makes it incumbent upon the accused to prove innocence while the accusers can arrest and forget the cases. The genesis of the PMLA in the current form has an UPA legacy. The NDA government gave it more biting teeth.
Kejriwal will soon hit the electoral deck and campaign hard in the Haryana Assembly elections. He may also work out informal understanding with the Congress in Haryana.
The government recently said that there are 63502 undertrials in the country who have been in jails for over one year and less than two years. There are more than 11448 undertrials in the country who are languishing in jails for more than five years.
While the Supreme Court has raised the Article 21 lamp post for granting bails to accused, more than one lakh undertrials in the country may wonder if they too will benefit from the same yardstick.
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