A Gujarat High Court’s division bench of Justice AS Supehia and Justice MR Mengdey on 27 September ordered the state government to pay ₹1 lakh as compensation to a 27-year-old convict Chandanji Thakor, who though secured bail in 2020 continued to languish in jail for another three years.
According to a report by Bar and Bench, despite Thakor securing bail in 2020, he had to spend 3 years in jail as prison authorities claimed that they could not open the bail order sent to them by the High Court registry as an attachment to an email.
“In the present case, the registry of this Court had categorically informed the jail authorities about the order passed by this Court releasing the applicant on regular bail. It is not the case that such E-mail was not received by the jail authorities. It is the case of the jail authorities that necessary action could not be taken given the COVID-19 pandemic and though they have received the E-mail, they were unable to open the attachment,” Bar and Bench quoted the Court order.
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Noting that despite the email being sent to the District Sessions Court, there were no efforts made by the Court to see that the order releasing the convict on bail was appropriately implemented.
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“The present case is an eye-opener,” said the Court.
Citing the plight of the prisoner, the Court order said it was inclined to grant compensation to him.
As per details, Thakor was serving life imprisonment in a murder case until his sentence was suspended on 29 September 2020.
Stating the excuse of the COVID-19 pandemic, the jail authorities claimed that necessary action could not be taken and the e-mail was not noticed by them. Hence, the order passed by the Court was not implemented.
In the latest order, the court also said the District Legal Services Authority (DLSA) failed to point out the suspension of sentence order to the jail authorities. The Court added that due to remissness by prison authorities, Thakor continued to remain in prison.
“The applicant, though was released and could have enjoyed his freedom, was forced to remain in jail only because no attention was paid by the jail authorities to contact the Registry or Sessions Court about the order passed by this Court,” said the Court.
Following this, the bench blamed the negligence of the jail authorities and directed the state government to pay the ₹1 lakh compensation within 14 days.
Among another thing, the court also directed all the DLSAs to collect data of all prisoners who have been granted bail but may not have been released yet.
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Updated: 27 Sep 2023, 05:12 PM IST