A division bench comprising Justice Pradeep Nandarajog and Justice Mool Chand Garg of the Delhi high court has asked the Delhi government to evaluate whether prosecution proceedings can be withdrawn against undertrials who are terminally ill, keeping in view the reason that “when trials complete, the terminally sick undertrials are dead.”
The court has sought the report from the Delhi government after taking suo motu cognisance of the matter published in a section of media that several undertrials lodged in the Tihar Jail are terminally ill and they perish by the time the trial comes to a conclusion.
The division bench asked the Delhi government lawyers — Additional Solicitor General (ASG), A.S. Chandhiok and Meera Bhatia, the standing counsel of the Delhi government — to file an affidavit within two months whether any policy guideline could be formulated for withdrawing the prosecution against such undertrials.
The court also made it clear that if the city government failed to formulate a policy guideline in the matter, they must elaborate the reasons.
Apart from this, in cases where the terminally ill undertrial is not the only accused, the court has asked the Delhi government to frame guidelines ensuring the fact that if it withdraws the charges against the terminally sick accused, then it should also see that it is not likely to have any effect on the charges against the co-accused in the particular case.
The division bench noted, “The state government might consider separating the trial of terminally sick undertrials vis-a-vis the co-accused. The reason is that all accused have to be present in court unless exempted, for a trial to proceed and it is noticed that on account of a terminally sick undertrial not being produced in court, the trial against co-accused is prolonged.”
At present there are four terminally-ill undertrials in the high-security Tihar Jail out of a total of 8,463 undertrials.