Digvijaya Singh demands bail for undertrials

NEW DELHI: Even as political correctness prompts his political peers not to speak out against infinite custody of undertrials, Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh has made a strong pitch for the release on bail of all accused who have been chargesheeted in various cases.

Singh's assertion comes in the backdrop of continued incarceration of former telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi even after charges being framed against them. Singh, however, said he was not taking any names while making his point.

"Good to know Rajat Gupta got bail. Would our Judiciary also take a cue and not keep undertrials in lock up once they are charge-sheeted," Singh said in his post on micro-blogging site Twitter. Gupta, who was arrested on charges of passing insider information to his billionaire friend Raj Rajaratnam, was released on $10 million bond after he pleaded not guilty to offences that carry a potential penalty of 105 years in prison.

The Congress general secretary invoked Gupta's release to drive home the point that proper jurisprudence considers a person innocent until proven guilty. And in the case of Kanimozhi, she is an accused in the 2G case as an accused and not as a convict. Given this context, bail is a right.

Quoting former SC judge, Justice VR Krishna Aiyar, Singh said every accused has the right to get a bail, until he is convicted. "Once a person is chargesheeted and the investigation in the particular case is completed, every accused has a right to get bail as a principle... I think this is something our judiciary should take into consideration."

Stressing that he was not taking any names and this does not concern one particular issue or person, he said, "there are hundreds of undertrials languishing in jails in every part of the country in absence of bail".

Without making reference to any particular case, he said that the "basic issue is, if someone has not been convicted then it is not legally right to keep him in jail for long time".