’Liberty is not a gift for the few’: Indian SC on Goswami bail

The Supreme Court of India on Friday gave a clarion call to judges to protect personal liberty and the rights of ordinary people to bail, saying “liberty is not a gift for the few.”

Common citizens without the means or resources to move the High Courts or the Supreme Court were languishing in jails due to undertrials, the Supreme Court reminded. “Deprivation of liberty even for a single day is one day too many,” an SC bench declared in a 55-page order pronounced on Friday, reports The Hindu.

“It is through the instrumentality of bail that our criminal justice system’s primordial interest in preserving the presumption of innocence finds its most eloquent expression. The remedy of bail is the solemn expression of the humaneness of the justice system,” Justice Chandrachud, who wrote the judgment, observed.

The state should not be allowed to use criminal law as a ruse to harass citizens, he cautioned.

“Liberty survives by the vigilance of her citizens, on the cacophony of the media and in the dusty corridors of courts alive to the rule of [and not by] law. Yet, much too often, liberty is a casualty when one of these components is found wanting,” the judgment said.

Arnab Goswami case

The verdict gave detailed reasons for the apex court’s decision to grant bail to Republic TV editor-in-chef Arnab Goswami in an abetment to suicide case on November 11.

The judgment said a “prima facie evaluation” of the FIR against Goswami did not establish the ingredients of the offence of abetment of suicide against him. It declared that the “doors of the Supreme Court cannot be closed to a citizen who is able to establish prima facie that the instrumentality of the state is being weaponised for using the force of criminal law.”

The judgment criticised the Bombay High Court for “failing to notice” or even attempt to make a prima facie evaluation of the contents of the FIR. It said the High Court did not take into account the “disconnect between the FIR and the provisions of Section 306 IPC [abetment to suicide]”.

Justice Chandrachud said the High Court erred in asking Goswami to apply for regular bail instead of focusing on his plea to quash the FIR.

“The High Court should not foreclose itself from the exercise of the power when a citizen has been arbitrarily deprived of their personal liberty in an excess of state power,” he noted.