India: Poor convicts on death row get a new year gift

In 2019, poor and marginalised litigants approaching the Supreme Court can expect quality legal aid to fight their cases. This came about after an in-house study by the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee (SCLSC), that concluded that poor litigants on death row or facing harsh punishments are getting a raw deal on account of poverty.

While this mechanism could take time to set in, 2 recent judgments by the apex court, both given in early December, did factor the poor socio-economic condition of prisoners while commuting their capital punishment to life term. One such case was death row convict Antony alias Antappan who wiped out 6 members of a family in Kerala in 2001. The other was Rajendra Wasnaik from Maharashtra, who brutally raped and murdered a 3-year-old in 2007.

Quoting from the report prepared by the SCLSC in its judgment, a bench of justices Madan B Lokur (since retired), S Abdul Nazeer and Deepak Gupta said, "The poor are more often than not at the receiving end in access to justice and access to remedies available, as is evident from a fairly recent report prepared by the SCLSC which acknowledges, through Project Sahyog, enormous delays in attending to cases of the poor and the needy."

For 2019, the judges resolved, "Quality legal aid to the disadvantaged and weaker sections of society is an area that requires great and urgent attention, and we hope that a vigorous beginning is made in this direction in the new year."

For impoverished prisoners in the country, the court's judgment must come as welcome relief. Statistics compiled by the National Law University, Delhi, in its Death Penalty India Report based on interviews with 373 death row prisoners across the country, found out that 3/4 of these prisoners (numbering approximately 274) were economically vulnerable, with most of them being the sole or primary earners in their families. Even educationally, almost 225 prisoners didn't complete secondary schooling, while 84 never went to school at all. As trials in their cases progressed, they were forced to borrow loans or sell valuable assets in order to engage lawyers. By the time their appeals reached the high courts or the Supreme Court, they were financially drained and relied on anything the court gave by way of free legal aid.

It is this legal aid that the Supreme Court has targeted to improve in the new year as part of a systemic reform in the criminal justice delivery system. Judges were cautious to add that consideration of convicts' socio-economic condition does not mean disproving his/her guilt, but to help in awarding an appropriate sentence.

Article 39A of the Constitution promises free legal aid to all citizens. But 'Project Sahyog', a pilot venture of the SCLSC, upon analysis of 1,188 cases relating to poor convicts pending in the Supreme Court, found that in about 48 cases, the convict's appeal couldn't be listed for more than a decade for want of legal aid. Similarly, about 165 cases are pending since 2006 on account of the convict's failure to get legal aid. Of these, 776 were criminal cases and 412 civil matters.

Source: dnaindia.com, January 1, 2019

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
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