1.“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread, lampooned Anatole France. The reality of this caricature of equal justice under the law, whereby the poor are priced out of their liberty in the justice market, is the grievance of the petitioner.His criminal appeals pends in this court and he has obtained an order of bail in his favour “ to the satisfaction of the Chief Judicial magistrate”. The direction of this court did not spell out the details of the bail, and so, the magistrate ordered that a surety in a sum of Rs.10,000/-be produced which, in actual impact, was a double denial of the bail benefit. For one thing the miserable mason, the petitioner before us, could not afford to procure that huge sum of manage a surety of sufficient prosperity.Affluents do not befriend indigo.ents.For another, the magistrate made an odd order refusing to accept the suretyship of the petitionership of the petitioner’s brother because he and his assets were in another district.
2. If mason and millionaire were treated alike, egregious inegality is an inevitablility. Likewise, geographic allergy at the judicial level makes mockery of equal protection of the laws within the territory of India. India is one and not a conglomeration of Districts, untouchably apart.
10. It sounds like culture of bonded labour, and yet are we to cling to it!
33. To add insult to injury, the magistrate demanded sureties fron his own District! What is Malayalee, Tamil or Telgu to do if arrested for alleged misappropriation or theft or criminal trespass in Bastar,Port Blair,Pahalgam or Chandi Chowk?He can not have sureties owning properties in these distant places.He may not know any one there and might have come in batch or to seek a job or in a morcha.Judicial disruption of India unity is surest achieved by such provincial allergies……………………..
34. We mandate the magistrate to release the petitioner on his own bond in a sum of Rs.1,000/-
35………………… The best guarantee of presence in court is the reach of the law, not the money tag. A parting thought. If the indigents are not to be betrayed by the law including bail law, re-writing of many processual laws is an urgent desideratum; and the judiciary will do well to remember that the geo-legal frontiers of the central codes cannot be difsfigured by cartographic discretion in the name of the language or province.
Moti Ram Vs State of Madhyapradesh
AIR 1978 SC 1594
CORAM
V.R.Krishna Iyer
D.A.Desai.
This memorable and Classic pronouncement of the Apex Court on Bail Law still rings loud in the Court even after more than 30 years….. but intentional ignorance of this pronouncement rules the bail proceedings till today.
