The Supreme Court Legal Update
The Hon’ble Supreme Court in Javed Gulam Nabi Shaikh vs State of Maharashtra 2024 INSC 645 observed that "...Criminals are not born out but made. The human
potential in everyone is good and so, never write off any criminal as beyond
redemption. This humanist fundamental is often missed when dealing with
delinquents, juvenile and adult. Indeed, every saint has a past and every
sinner a future. When a crime is committed, a variety of factors is responsible
for making the offender commit the crime. Those factors may be social and
economic, may be, the result of value erosion or parental neglect; may be,
because of the stress of circumstances, or the manifestation of temptations in
a milieu of affluence contrasted with indigence or other privations.
19. If the State or any prosecuting agency including
the court concerned has no wherewithal to provide or protect the fundamental
right of an accused to have a speedy trial as enshrined under Article 21 of the
Constitution then the State or any other prosecuting agency should not oppose
the plea for bail on the ground that the crime committed is serious. Article 21
of the Constitution applies irrespective of the nature of the crime.
20. We may
hasten to add that the petitioner is still an accused; not a convict. The
over-arching postulate of criminal jurisprudence that an accused is presumed to
be innocent until proven guilty cannot be brushed aside lightly, howsoever
stringent the penal law may be....."
