Courts must not play coroner, but doctors & save legal rights before they are extinguished, the High Court of Delhi said on Wednesday, granting bail to a terror accused who has been in jail for more than twelve years as an undertrial.
The Delhi High Court underlined that accused Mohd Hakim, arrested for his alleged role in the 2008 serial blasts in Delhi, made out a case of his right to speedy trial being defeated & violated if he is not granted bail. Booked under the stringent UAPA, Hakim has been in custody since Feb 2009 & is accused of carrying cycle ball-bearings from Lucknow to Delhi for making IEDs that were used in the blasts.
The Court said that “Courts must not play coroner & attend to legal or constitutional rights only after they are “dead”. Instead we must play doctor, & save such rights from demise before they are extinguished. Courts should proactively step in to protect such rights from being stifled & buried”.
Death sentence can’t be treated as default punishment : Court
A bench of Justice Siddharth Mridul & Justice Anup J Bhambhani observed that Courts must be vigilant, & “act as sentinels on the qui vive when it comes to protecting constitutional & legal right”. It further pointed out that Hakim spent more than twelve years in custody as an undertrial during which 256 witnesses have been examined, but 60 prosecution witnesses still remain to be examined. It added that “Regardless of how much longer the trial may take hereafter, the incarceration of more than 12 years suffered by the appellant in custody as an undertrial would certainly qualify as a long enough period for the system to acknowledge that the appellant’s right to speedy trial continues to be defeated”.
The bench also brushed aside objections by the police that since Hakim can get death penalty if convicted, he should not be allowed to step out of jail. It stressed that the death sentence was for “rarest of rare” cases & could not be treated as “default punishment.” High Court added that since the prosecution plans to seek capital sentence for Hakim, “it is therefore all the more necessary that he be afforded a speedy trial”.
In absence of a speedy trial, the accused “deserves at least to be given back his liberty after more than 12 long years of imprisonment as an undertrial, since it cannot be ignored that as of now, he has undergone punishment for more than a decade of his life, for an alleged offence for which he has not yet been found guilty.” Hakim had moved the HC in appeal against a trial court order rejecting his bail application in the criminal case under several provisions of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, Explosive Substances Act, 1908 & the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.
The bench observed that even if it is assumed that the accused would be awarded a life sentence after the completion of the trial, he has already undergone more than half the sentence he may eventually face. The prosecution opposed the bail plea saying offences alleged to have been committed by the accused were grave & heinous. The serial bomb blasts that occurred in different places in Delhi on Sept 13, 2008, left 26 people dead & 135 injured.