From Jal Khambata
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has put a question mark on the prohibition policy enforced by the Bihar Government since 2018 without adequate preparations to handle the cases of drinking in the state violating the prohibition.
Issuing a notice to the state government and listing the case on March 8 on a petition by one Sudhir Kumar Yadav alias Sudhir Singh held on the charge of boozing, a Bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and M M Sundresh on Wednesday wanted to know whether the plea bargaining provision be introduced to let the culprits be released, in view of a very large number of cases clogging the courts.
India does not have the plea bargaining law as common in the United States to avoid the protracted and complicated long trials. It involves an accused charged with a criminal offence negotiate with the prosecution for a lesser punishment than what is provided in law by pleading guilting to a lesser serious offence.
In its order, the Supreme Court referred to a number of cases coming to it, arising from proceedings initiated under the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Amendment Act, 2018. “The trial courts and the High Court are both being crowded by bail applications to an extent that at some stage 16 judges of the High Court are listening to bail matters and prosecutions under the Act concerned forms a large part of it,” the Bench said, noting that “trials of bail would also result in crowding of the prisons.”
The Bench asked: “What steps the state of Bihar is taking, having brought the law into force and what analysis took place before the law was brought into force in terms of the court infrastructure required and the manpower required to deal with the litigations which would arise from such a statute?”
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