Bail or jail? Justice on trial

When Justice B.V. Nagarathna remarked that the Supreme Court is turning into a "bail court", she was not exaggerating.

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She was exposing the ugly truth of India's criminal justice system, a system that pays lip service to the principle enunciated decades ago by Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer-that "bail is the rule, jail the exception"- but practices the very opposite. Iyer had granted bail to a poor convict who, though technically released on a surety of Rs 10,000, could not afford it. For a man earning Rs 3 a day, which was a cruel joke-bail in name, jail in fact. Today, trial courts and even high courts still resort to such tactics, preferring to keep accused persons locked up rather than risk being accused of "selling bail". The result: a flood of bail pleas before the Supreme Court, where many prisoners have already wasted years-sometimes longer than the sentence they would have faced if convicted.