The Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act are among the special laws that the Madras High Court recently ordered the Tamil Nadu Judicial Academy to conduct a “refresher course” for all judicial officers (POCSO Act).
The order was given on December 23 by a bench of Justices PN Prakash and N Anand Venkatesh after they saw that a magistrate’s court had been irregularly extending the detention of a UAPA suspect. This was done in contravention of Section 167(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).
The Court emphasised that where a statutory bail petition is filed right away after the 90-day period has passed, an inalienable right accrues in favour of the accused for release on bail due to the investigating agency’s failure to complete the investigation within the allotted time frame. The accused is entitled to release on bail if he is willing to post bail as instructed by the court.
The High Court judged it appropriate to order refresher court for judicial personnel due to the shortcomings by the sessions court and the magistrate’s court in handling the accused’s bail petition.
The court was addressing a bail request made by a guy who had been detained and accused of being an Islamic State member under the UAPA and the Indian Penal Code.
The bench was shocked to learn that the concerned magistrate’s court had been periodically prolonging petitioner Mir Anas Ali’s custody without having the authority to do so since his arrest by the local police in the Ambur district in July 2022.
Additionally, the sessions judge sent the magistrate’s court his bail plea and asked it to hold off on sending any case materials to the sessions court, deferring to neither the special court nor the sessions court to preside over his bail application.
The UAPA laws had been used against Ali, therefore the inquiry should have been turned over to a specialized body, but instead, the High Court noted, the local police were still proving the case.
Ali submitted a plea for default bail that was first accepted after the police failed to file their chargesheet within the required 90 days. However, following the issuance of such bail, the police requested an extension of time from 90 to 180 days, which was granted. As a result, Ali’s release was revoked by the magistrate’s court, and the Sessions Court affirmed this decision.
The High Court used a tale from the Bible in response to such errors on the part of the court.
Before dealing with the issue that is involved in the present case, we are reminded of the famous parable of Lord Jesus, where he told his disciples thus: ‘Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not fall into a pit’ The reason why we started our discussion with this parable, will become evident once the reasons unfold,
The Court Held
The Court went on to say that because the accusations against the accused were severe and related to the safety of the country, it was forced to issue a punitive order.
The respondent (local police) was proceeding in the case in a mechanical fashion. To add insult to injury, even the trained judicial officers were ignorant with respect to the procedures to be adopted in a case involving offences under the 1967 UAP Act,
The Court Held
Ali was granted bail under the condition that he sign a 25,000 bond and name two sureties, one of whom had to be his parent.
The Court then ruled that instructions for judicial officer training must be issued immediately.
aking cue from the above parable, the first blind person in this case is the learned Sessions Judge, who was guiding the learned Magistrate, who was also blind, due to ignorance of the legal position and ultimately, both of them fell in a pit, leading to illegal and non est orders passed by the learned Magistrate,
The Court HeldFor the petitioner, advocate J Ravikumar made an appearance.
For the state, additional public prosecutor R Muniyapparaj made his appearance.The Court Held
[Read Judgment]
