Taking Bail Seriously

The state of Bail jurisprudence in india
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Description
Bail is a very important subject in the criminal justice system of a country. For a reasonably longtime, bail has been considered as a rule, and jail an exception in the Indian criminal justice system.1 The main object of ball is to ensure presence of the accused before the court of law where he/she faces the trial, and makes himself/herself available to the court for serving the sentence if convicted,' In a constitutionally-controlled criminal justice system like ours, there has always been a balancing approach between the liberty of the accused and the collective interests of the society which requires a fearless environment.3 Both arc equally important considerations. However, sometimes it becomes very difficult for the adjudicators to maintain a fine balance in this process as the whole process is determined through discretion that has to be exercised keeping in view the facts and circumstances of each case. In a number of cases, die Supreme Court of India has also followed a balanced approach regarding bail jurisprudence that was accordingly followed by the lower courts throughout the country as per the mandate of Article 141 of the Constitution but despite all this confusion still remains in the system and different kinds of approaches are visible in the judicial system when we go through the bail adjudication process and practice. It is a matter of fact that mostly the bail adjudication depends on the facts and circumstances of each case and it is very difficult to lay down specific guidelines that could be followed uniformly throughout the country in bail matters. Initially, for two or three decades, a liberal approach for granting bail continued but thereafter things changed differently, and the bail jurisprudence got a new shape. With the enactment of a number of special legislations that restricted bail, a visible change has been noted in the adjudication of bail applications throughout the country that has changed the bail jurisprudence up to a large extent.4 In the current scenario, a strict approach has been observed in the bail jurisprudence. However, recently the Supreme Court of India has suggested that a humane attitude needs to be adopted by a judge while dealing with an application for remanding a suspect or an accused person to police custody of judicial custody. 

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Author Details
Salman Khurshid 
Lokendra Malik