The Supreme Court (SC) has modified the standard operating procedure (SOP) for payment of bail amount of poor undertrial prisoners by state Governments through district legal services authority (DLSA). A bench of Justices MM Sundresh and Satish Chandra Sharma passed the order accepting the suggestion made by Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati and amicus curiae senior advocate Siddharth Luthra.
The Supreme Court made certain modification to its earlier SOP issued on February 13 last year and ordered that an empowered committee would be constituted comprising nominee of district collector or district magistrate, secretary of DLSA, superintendent of police, superintendent/deputy superintendent of the concerned prison and judge in-charge of the concerned prison. DLSA secretary will be convenor of the meetings of the empowered committee, it said.
The Supreme Court said if the undertrial prisoner is not released from jail within a period of seven days of order of grant of bail, then the jail authority should inform the secretary, DLSA. It said that the DLSA secretary upon receiving information would ensure to verify whether the undertrial prisoner has funds in his prisoner’s savings account and if not, then a request will be forwarded to the DLSA within a period of five days. The Supreme Court earlier passed the order in the matter taking note of the fact that a large number of poor undertrial prisoners continue to languish in jails as they were unable to pay the bail amount fixed by the courts as a precondition for their release.
Under the guidelines and SOP for implementation of the ‘Support to Poor Prisoners’ Scheme’ which was accepted by the Supreme Court last year, the funds to the states and Union territories were provided through the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) designated as the Central Nodal Agency (CNA) for this scheme. Under the scheme, the states and UTs draw the requisite amount from the CNA on case-to-case basis and reimburse the same to the concerned competent authority (court) for providing relief to the prisoner.
