New Delhi: Congress leader Digvijay Singh on Thursday once again spoke against keeping undertrials in jail, hours after a Delhi court rejected the bail plea of DMK MP Kanimozhi and seven other accused in the 2G case.
"I visited Ghazipur Jail to visit Congress workers framed in cases by UP Police. Interesting statistics about convicts and undertrials. Jail capacity 397, prisoners 621, convicts 70, undertrials 551. Once again I prove my point. Undertrials
unnecessarily being denied bail," Singh said in his two posts on the microblogging site Twitter.
Singh`s tweets came on a day a city court dismissed bail pleas of Kanimozhi and other 2G accused despite the CBI not objecting to the bail pleas of the DMK MP and four others.
This is the second time in a week that the AICC general secretary has flagged the issue of bail denial to undertrials.
On October 28 also Singh had made a strong pitch for release on bail of all accused who have been chargesheeted after completion of probe.
He had then cited the case of former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta in the US, who was given bail after being arrested in the US on charges of passing insider information to one of his billionaire friends.
"Good to know Rajat Gupta got bail. Would our Judiciary also take a cue and not keep undertrials in lock up once they are charge sheeted," Singh had tweeted.
Singh`s assertion had come in the backdrop of former Telecom Minister A Raja, Kanimozhi and Congress MP Suresh Kalmadi languishing behind bars in corruption cases like 2G and Commonwealth Games, but the AICC general secretary
stressed he was not taking any names.
Congress, had, however, refrained from endorsing his views saying it did not feel the need to comment on the remarks of "others" and that Singh can best explain his statements.
Singh, quoting Justice VR Krishna Aiyar, former Supreme Court judge, had said "every accused has the right to get a bail, until he is convicted".
"Once a person is chargesheeted and the investigation in the particular case is completed, every accused has a right to get bail as a principle...I think this is something, our judiciary should take into consideration."
Stressing that he was not taking any names and this does not concern one particular issue or person, he had said, "There are hundreds of undertrials languishing in jails in every part of the country in absence of bails."
Without making reference to any particular case, he had said that the "basic issue is, if someone has not been convicted then it is not legally right to keep him in jail for long time".
PTI
