Convicts Represented By Legal Aid Advocates Shouldn't Suffer Due To Delay : Supreme Court Issues Directions For Early Disposal Of Criminal Appeals In HC's

The Supreme Court has issued directions for timely disposal of appeals filed against conviction pending before the High Courts which are being looked after by the High Court Legal Services Committee.

A Bench comprising Justice SK Kaul and Justice MM Sundresh observed that a detailed exercise was undertaken by the Delhi High Court Legal Services Committee whereby it prepared a chart with list of all criminal appeals pending in the Delhi High Court and being looked after by the High Court Legal Services Committee and shared with the National Legal Services Authority.

The Bench has directed High Court Legal Services Committee of different High Courts to undertake a similar exercise so that convicts represented by legal aid Advocates do not suffer due to delay in hearing of the appeals.

The Court has directed the NALSA to monitor the exercise to be carried on.

The Delhi High Court Legal Services Committee has also been directed to take up the cases of those convicts who have undergone more than half the sentence in case of fixed term sentences and examine the feasibility of filing bail applications before the High Court.

In the case of 'life sentence' cases, similar exercise has been directed to be undertaken where eight years of actual custody has been undergone.

As a pilot project, in fixed term sentence cases, the Bench has asked High Court of Delhi and Chhattisgarh to get in touch with the convicts and find out whether they are willing to accept their infractions and agree to disposal of the appeals on the basis of sentence undergone,

Further, according to the Bench, the same can be done even in respect of 'life sentence' cases where the sentenced persons are entitled to remission of the remaining sentence i.e., whether they would still like to contest the appeals or the remission of sentence would be acceptable to such of the convicts.

The Bench has clarified that the object of these directions is not to compel or extract acceptance from such convicts depriving of the right of appeal.

These directions are based on a premise that at times if a convict has actually done of what he is accused of and he is remorseful, he may be willing to accept his acts and suffer a lesser sentence.

The Bench was considering the matter pertaining to appeals against conviction pending before the High Courts which are being looked after by the High Court Legal Services Committee.

In the present special leave petition, the petitioner has served the sentence of 10 years and is serving a default sentence on account of non payment of fine.

The case is being heard with other special leave petitions where the Court took cognisance of the issue of untimely consideration and disposal of jail petitions , applications for remission and pre mature release of convicts,etc

The cognisance was taken by a Bench led by Justice SK Kaul observing that cases for release were not timely considered and legal assistance was not provided.

The Bench had on March 1st asked the the National Legal Services Authority [NALSA] to take up the task of having a comprehensive guideline on aspect of how the matter of seeking remission after serving minimum sentence as per the respective State policies should be dealt with.

The Court had asked NALSA to consider whether in narcotics matters there should be a policy and if so, to what effect, how in matters of lesser sentence can legal assistance be provided when the cause arises rather than years later etc.

The Court had asked the NALSA and the Registrar to iron out the aspect of cases directly received by the Supreme Court from the jail, registered as jail cases but there appears to be a time lag between the registration of the case and the legal assistance being rendered in this behalf.

Advocates Gaurav Agrawal, Liz Mathew and Devansh A. Mohta are assisting the Court in the present matter. 

Case Title : Sonadhar v State of Chhattisgarh

Citation : LL 2021 SC 565

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