‘Travesty of justice’: Bombay HC frees 30-yr-old Pune man sentenced to 83 years
The Bombay high court, which reviewed some of the cases in which the man was convicted, found that he hadn’t received legal aid in 38 of the 41 cases in which he pleaded guilty
MUMBAI: A 30-year-old Pune resident sentenced to 83 years in jail in 41 theft cases was ordered to be released by the Bombay high court, observing that if the bench did not interfere, it will result in a serious miscarriage of justice.
A division bench of the high court passed the order on Monday on a petition by the man, Aslam Salim Shaikh, who had been in jail since his arrest on March 3, 2014. Shaikh was first arrested in a theft case registered by Pune’s Shahkar Nagar and subsequently placed under arrest by 11 other police stations in 40 other theft cases. He pleaded guilty in the 41 cases and was sentenced to imprisonment for periods ranging from 6 months to 3 years.
Shaikh approached the high court in 2022, nine years after his arrest, complaining that he was illiterate, too poor to hire a lawyer and had been misled into pleading guilty to crimes that he hadn’t committed. The high court, which examined the cases, found that Shaikh didn’t even get legal aid in 38 of the 41 cases. And that the evidence against him was so weak that he would have been acquitted if he had stood trial.
“We cannot be oblivious to the fact that there will be a serious miscarriage of justice if we fail to interfere and exercise our discretion in writ jurisdiction as well as under our inherent powers in the peculiar facts of this case,” said the bench of justices Revati Mohite Dere and Gauri Godse as it ordered
“...in exercise of our writ and inherent jurisdiction, we deem it appropriate to put right the clock to prevent miscarriage of justice, failing which the petitioner would remain incarcerated for more than 93 years (including default sentence for failing to pay the fine) in 41 cases for committing thefts, with no prospect of coming out of jail anytime in the future,” the high court said.
The bench reduced the total prison term handed down by different courts in Pune to the term that he has already undergone since his arrest in 2014 and ordered the Yerawada Central Jail superintendent in Pune to release him.
The court noted that Shaikh had been handed out a jail sentence that was more than what a life convict usually undergoes for committing a murder. “If permitted, this would certainly lead to a travesty of justice… Being alive to this reality, we cannot permit this miscarriage of justice,” the court said
Shaikh said he pleaded guilty because he was told that he would be released from prison for the sentence already served as an undertrial prisoner.
The high court also expressed its shock at finding that he was not even provided legal aid in 38 cases. The bench also spotted three cases in which Shaikh was sentenced by the magistrate though Shaikh would have been a minor at the time the crimes were committed. But the judicial magistrates did not bother to look into these aspects.
“We have perused a few of the FIRs to satisfy our conscience, with respect to the nature of offences alleged to have been committed by the petitioner,” said the bench. “|It appears that the said FIRs have been lodged against unknown person/persons. The material in some of the cases, if the trial had commenced may have probably ended in the petitioner’s acquittal for want of evidence. It was the bounden duty of the learned magistrates to have at least perused the papers before awarding the sentences, more particularly, when the petitioner had pleaded guilty, to ensure that the sentences awarded were commensurate with the evidence on record,” the bench added.