By Shanti Bhushan
Harassment of accused persons in criminal cases is incredible. They have to keep on appearing in courts again and again after signing a bond for their continued appearance. The proceedings keep on getting adjourned again and again for different reasons. Is this at all required under the procedure laid down in the code of criminal procedure? Most certainly not.
The CrPC permits an accused person to be represented by a lawyer of his choice. The code also permits the court to exempt the personal appearance of an accused represented by a lawyer. The Supreme Court has held that even for framing charges against an accused, his presence is not required and the lawyer's presence is enough.
The code provides that if the personal attendance of an accused is required on a particular date, like for his identification, the court can pass an order to require such personal attendance on that specific date. In summons cases, Sec 317 also permits the questioning of the accused being dispensed with. Thus an entire trial can be completed without requiring the presence of an accused on a single date. In fact, it is only the lawyer who plays a role in the proceedings and the accused remains just a spectator.
The question needs to be asked as to why in such situations, do magistrates insist on the personal presence of all accused persons on every date and get bonds signed by the accused persons with or without sureties for their appearance on every date.
One consequence of this practice is that each magistrate has to waste several hours of his time every day in deciding applications for exemption from appearance of a particular accused on a specific date for special reasons to be shown in an application.
The Bombay high court has delivered a judgment giving a direction to all subordinate courts to exempt the personal appearance of all accused persons in all criminal cases. I am sure that this one simple directive must have doubled the disposal of cases by each magistrate. What is, however, even more important is that the accused persons will be saved from the immense harassment of having to appear before the courts again and again. Their trauma of 'tareekh pe tareekh' will be a thing of the past.
If Arvind Kejriwal's decision not to execute a bond for appearance and go to jail instead secures a general directive from the Supreme Court to all criminal courts in the country on the lines of the directive given by the Bombay high court, it will bring enormous relief to millions of accused persons in the country. Then his stay in jail will not be in vain.
Even though Sec 88 of CrPC gives discretion to the magistrate to require or not to require the execution of a bond by accused persons, few magistrates are willing to exercise this discretion.
The writer is former law minister and founder-member of AAP
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