The Delhi High Court on Thursday castigated the Tihar Jail authorities for not releasing an accused person within 24 hours despite the order of the court granting the bail.
A division bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Subramonium Prasad also directed the D.G. (Prisons) to conduct an inquiry into the matter and file a Status Report.
The said report, the bench said, will also furnish details of the number of occasions in the past three years when despite orders passed by courts admitting persons in custody to bail, he/she has not been released within 24 hours from the date of receipt of such orders, for reasons not attributable to the beneficiary of such an order.
“A column wise tabulated statement shall be enclosed with the Status Report indicating the date of the order, the case number, the date of release, the number of days of unlawful detention”, the court directed.
The court was hearing a plea filed by one Sanjay Singh alleging that the Superintendent of Tihar Jail had illegally detained him in jail despite the order of MM, Dwarka Courts, on May 18 admitting him to bail.
The court also expressed its dissatisfaction with the explanation offered or rather, the lack of explanation offered by Jail Superintendent for unlawfully detaining the petitioner in prison for the period between June 15 to June 25.
“We decline to accept the perfunctory apology sought to be offered by the deponent. In any case, the said apology is not unqualified; instead, the deponent has offered several explanations for detaining the petitioner upto 25.6.2020, which do not ring true”, the court said.
On June 6, the High Court had directed the Tihar authorities to file an affidavit stating inter alia the date on which a copy of the order dated May 18, 2020 passed by the MM, South-West, Dwarka, New Delhi, admitting the petitioner to bail was served on the jail authorities and explaining the reasons for illegally detaining him till late last night.
The court had also observed-
“We are aghast to hear that even after an order was passed by the competent court admitting the petitioner to bail on 18th May, 2020, the respondent authorities continued to detain him illegally for a period of 11 days”.
Read order here:
[pdfviewer]http://theleaflet.in/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Delhi-HC-July.pdf[/pdfviewer]
