Magistrates should be sent to judicial academies to upgrade skills if they needlessly send people to custody: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Tuesday reiterated that magistrates should not unnecessarily send people to custody [Satender Kumar Antil v. Central Bureau of Investigation and anr].A Bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Ahsanuddin Amanullah and Aravind Kumar said that such magistrates, who send people to custody unnecessarily, should have their judicial work withdrawn and they should be send to judicial academies for training."Orders are being passed which have a dual ramification i.e., sending people to custody where they are not required to be so sent and creating further litigation by requiring the aggrieved parties to move further. This is something which cannot be countenanced and in our view, it is the duty of the High Courts to ensure that the subordinate judiciary under their supervision follows the law of the land. If such orders are being passed by some Magistrates, it may even require judicial work to be withdrawn and those Magistrates to be sent to the judicial academies for upgradation of their skills for some time."It is the duty of High Courts to ensure that the subordinate judiciary follows the law of the land, the bench added..The Court noted that such orders were most frequently passed by courts in the State of Uttar Pradesh, and asked that the Allahabad High Court's Acting Chief Justice be informed of the same."Amongst the illustrative orders, very large number of them happens to be from Uttar Pradesh and we are informed that orders passed specially in Hathras, Ghaziabad and Lucknow Courts seem to be in ignorance of this law. We call upon the counsel for the High Court of Allahabad to bring this to the notice of the Hon’ble the Acting Chief Justice so that necessary directions are issued to ensure that such episodes don’t occur, including some of the suggestions made by us above.".The Bench was hearing a case regarding compliance of its July 2022 judgment in Satender Antil, where it had, among other things, emphasised the need to enforce provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) in arrests and trials.Pertinently, the Bench in that judgment had called for a new bail legislation and said that courts should decide bail applications within two weeks, except in cases where the law provides otherwise.It had ruled that the mandate under Sections 41 and 41A of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) should be strictly complied with, and that non-compliance would entitle accused to bail.It had also flagged the fact that the rate of conviction being abysmally low might be weighing in the minds of courts while deciding bail applications.A slew of directions were ordered to be forwarded to all states and union territories, who were also directed to file affidavits/status reports within a period of four months.The judgment had come in a plea where the Court had initially taken note of the 'continuous supply of cases seeking bail after filing of the final report on a wrong interpretation of Section 170 of the Code of Criminal Procedure'..On Tuesday, the top court directed that the Registrars of the High Courts of Delhi, Telangana, Meghalaya and Uttarakhand be present on the next hearing for not filing compliance reports.The Bench rued the fact that ten months after its judgment, there have been a number of abberrations at the ground level."It is not as if these judgments have not been brought to the notice of the trial Courts and in fact have even been noted," the Court stated..It then addressed instances of public prosecutors taking a legal position contrary to the law laid down by the top court in this regard.Appearing for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Additional Solicitor General SV Raju said that the central agency would issue directions in this regard. The Bench said the same should be done across States and agencies."...we are of the view that all prosecuting agencies/State Governments/UTs should issue such directions to the Public Prosecutors so that neither in pleadings nor in arguments, is a stand taken contrary to the legal position enunciated by this Court. The circulation in this behalf should be made through the Director of Prosecution and training programmes be organized to keep on updating the Prosecutors in this behalf," the Court ordered..Next on the Court's agenda was the disproportionately large number of undertrials in some states. To address this issue, it asked counsel for Tamil Nadu, Assam, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha to take special steps in coordination with legal service authorities to deal with the large number of undertrial prisoners in those states. It also noted,"Insofar as the Madras High Court is concerned, none has even cared to attend the proceedings. Let the Registrar remain personally present in Court as even the arrangement for representation has not been made.".The Bench took note of a judgment passed on Monday by the top court where it was stated that the legality of trial courts passing remand orders the moment an accused is to appear, needs to be examined in an appropriate case."...this case itself is the appropriate case as directions have already been passed and somehow they have been understood as if they will apply to cases for regular bail and not to anticipatory bail. We would like to clarify that what we have enunciated qua bail would equally apply to anticipatory bail cases. Anticipatory bail after all is one of the species of a bail," the order noted..The Court also directed the states that had not issued formal standing orders regarding compliance of the judgments to do so within three weeks, failing which their Home Secretaries shall personally remain present in court..The Supreme Court had in February lamented the delay by four High Courts, the CBI and most states in filing status reports in this case.In that hearing, Senior Advocate Sidharth Luthra, who is now formally the Amicus Curiae in the matter, had pointed out that several cases of non-compliance of the top court's order in Siddharth v State of Uttar Pradesh have occured.This judgment had made it clear that trial courts cannot insist that accused are remanded to custody before they take cognisance of the chargesheet.The Bench had then said that the affidavits by High Courts should reflect if the same is being monitored.Interestingly, the top court had ordered that the judgments in Antil and Siddharth be made part of the curriculum of judicial academies..Advocate Akbar Siddique is assisting the Amicus in the present case..[Read order]