Criminal Appeals From 1980s Pending In Allahabad HC; Convicts Awaiting Bail Even After 16 Yrs Sentence : Supreme Court Says "Disturbing State Of Affairs"

The bench of Justices SK Kaul and MM Sundresh made these remarks while considering a criminal appeal assailing Allahabad High Court's order of refusing to grant bail to a convict who had undergone more than 12 years of actual incarceration.

The Court said that the criminal appeals of 1980s are being heard by the High Court in the normal course.

"The only issue is whether in a criminal appeal of the year 2012 pending before the High Court of Allahabad where criminal appeals in the normal course are being heard of the 1980s and the appellant having undergone 12 years of actual incarceration is still to be denied bail!", the Supreme Court Bench exclaimed.

During the course of hearing, the petitioner's counsel had submitted that similar cases of incarceration running into more than 16 years were pending consideration even for grant of bail before the Lucknow Bench and that there was no criminal Bench to hear these matters for the last 25 days.

Thus pursuant to the submissions made by petitioner's counsel, the bench further directed the Registrar of the Lucknow Bench to submit a report with regards to the position of non availability of a bench as well as the pendency of the number of bail applications of convicts who have been in custody for more than 14 years and 10 years within 4 weeks.

"This is a disturbing state of affairs, more so as we have been seized with the issue of the pendency of bail matters before the High Court of Allahabad and the Lucknow Bench and had even issued directions in this behalf for expediting the same in Saudan Singh Vs. State of Uttar Pradesh (Crl.Appeal No.308/ 2022) dated 25th February, 2022," court said in its order.

While granting bail to the appellant, the bench in their order said, "The High Court seems to think so and, to say the least, we completely disagree and are of the view that the bail should have been for the asking and the impugned order is completely unsustainable."

It may be noted that Justice SK Kaul while expressing concern about long pendency of criminal appeals before the Allahabad High Court had directed for preparing list for the ones who have served more than 14 years and were not repeat offenders and for the ones where the accused had already served more than 10 years and could be granted bail in one go.

On Friday a bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and AS Bopanna had also granted bail to 12 convicts who had undergone more than 14 years of incarceration and their bail application was pending before the Allahabad High Court.

Case Title: Suleman v State of Uttar Pradesh| Criminal Appeal No.491/2022

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