The wait seems to be long for sixteen year old Suraj Chaudhry. He leans against the wooden pillar of lawyers’ shed in High Court compound.. “I am waiting for advocate Neeraj Sharma for over an hour. I am not going home till I get an answer whether he can get my father out of jail,” Suraj said.
His father Vinod Chaudhry is in jail for the last 14 years for an alleged murder of his neighbor in Baghpat. Suraj says his father was falsely implicated in the case because he belongs to a lower caste. “We are dalit so my father was sent to jail while a rich man from our village who belongs to upper caste and is behind that murder is roaming free. In 2003 court gave him bail but he has not been released,” Suraj says.
Suraj is regular in that compound. Advocates milling around are well versed with the case. “The court has given Vinod Chaudhry bail on surety bond of Rs 24,000. As he has not been able to deposit that money Vinod is in jail for last 12 years,’ Md Anis Siddaqui a elderly advocate said.
“He has to get that money …. Unless he deposits surety in court he will not be released,” he said.
Suraj is illiterate. He works in a roadside eatery while his mother works as a maid. Both of them earn around Rs 5,000 per month which is not enough for the family of six – that includes grandparents of Suraj.
For them paying Rs 24,000 as surety is a princely amount.
“Justice seems very costly for poor in India. A poor continues languishing in jail even after he gets bail because he does not have the money to pay surety. There are thousands of such prisoners and the government is indifferent,” lenin Raghuvanshi, Executive Director, Peoplke’s Vigilance Committee of Human Rights (PVCHR) told The Pioneer.
Suraj’s case is not a solitary case. Food and Civil Supplies Minister in the Akhilesh Yadav government Raghuraj Pratap Singh, also called Raja Bhaiya, has rescued one Jai Ram Saber, a tribal, from jail. Jai Ram, a native of Kalahandi in Odhisawas working as a pharmacist with a quake in Rampur. In 1989 the quake was murdered and Jai Ram was arrested.
It was Jai Ram’ good luck and love for sports that brought him close to Raja Bhaiya. The minister was in jail in 2010 after weapons were recovered from his house. later Raja Bhaiya was exonerated and the case was withdrawn.
“I was in Bareilly jail. I love sports and used to play volleyball there. There I met Jai Ram, a lanky youth who was himself a good player. There I came to know that he is in jail since 1989. The court had given him a bail in 1992 as he did not have money to pay two sureties of Rs 8,000 each he is still in jail,” Raja Bhaiya said.
Raja Bhaiya paid the surety of Jai Ram and freed him. He now works as a care taker of Raja Bhaiya’s house in lucknow.
Jai Ram, who since has got married and has a son, said that he had tried to arrange for the surety amount. My relatives are very poor. When they heard I am in jail they stopped communicating with me. I was in a big trouble. With no help coming from any quarter I was almost in a foreign land till Bhaiya ame as a savior.
Raja Bhaiya said: “Jai Ram was in jail for almost 20 years – 17 years more only because he was poor and did not have money to pay surety. The police has so far failed to prove Jai Ram’s involvement in the murder,” he said. “In jail I met many people who are languishing because they do not have access to either lawyer or money to pay the surety. The jails are choc-o-bloc with such people.”
The Government officials admit that jails in Uttar Pradesh are overcrowded. R.K Dwivedi, an official in Jail administration said that against the capacity to keep 48970 prisoners jails have 84228 inmates which is 172 per cent of its capacity.
The National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) says that all the Indian jails are facing same problem It its report it said while the available capacity is 3, 43,169, the total inmate population is much higher at 3, 85,135. That would make the occupancy rate 112.2 per cent.
Jail Minister Balram Yadav said that reasons for overcrowding of jails could be many like prisoners not getting bail. But around 70 per cent of the cases people are still in jail because they have failed to pay fine or cannot furnish sureity bonds as asked by the court.
“In 2013 a similar case came to light when a women was incarcerated in jail for 19 years despite she got bail from the court. Her son managed the money and moved the High court to free his mother. Government has information about such cases. We cannot help. There is a judicial process involved in it,” Yadav said.
lenin Raghuvanshi of PVCHR said that 90 per cent of these undertrials are poor who do not have any access to the lawyers. “Have you ever seen a rich businessman or powerful politician languishing in jail for that long. No. They have money power and can turn the case on its head and roam free while an innocent poor continues languishing in jail,” he said.
=============