Disregard shown by senior most officials to orders passed by Court has grave consequences on rule of law: Allahabad High Court

The Allahabad High Court on Thursday pulled up police authorities in Uttar Pradesh for failing to provide instructions regarding bail applications to government lawyers on time (Sanjay @ Mausam v. State of UP)..A Single Judge Bench of Justice Ajay Bhanot stated in the order, "It may be added that disregard shown by the senior most officials to the orders passed by the Court has grave consequences on the rule of law in the country.".The Court was hearing one such bail application where the police authorities had failed to deliver instructions to the Assistant Government Advocate (AGA) appearing for the State. Justice Bhanot came down heavily on these authorities, stating that such delay often leads to unjustified incarceration of an accused in jail."This Court repeatedly noticed failure of the police authorities to provide instructions to the learned Government Advocate of bail applications from time to time as repeatedly observed. Once the police authorities have been alerted to the fact that there failure to provide instructions in time strikes at the root of law. It often leads to unjustified incarceration of an accused in jail," the order stated..It was noted that police officials did not follow the orders of the Court in another matter, in which the AGA submitted that the State government is committed to uphold the rule of law. In that order, the Court had noted,"The process of furnishing instructions to the GA/ AGA before hearing of bail applications has to contain safeguards which protect the constitutional liberties of the bail applicants/accused persons. To achieve the aforesaid, the procedure has to be transparent, with well defined responsibilities, and definite timelines. The responsible officials should be accountable for failures to adhere to the said procedure and timelines stated therein.".Having found that its directions in this order were not followed, the Court stated,"However this repeated deviation merely reflect aberrations in the system and faults on the part of individual officials who need to be appropriately counselled in this regard."It thus hoped that expeditious steps are taken by the police authorities for compliance of the directions given to the Director General of UP Police in this case..Counsel for the bail applicant, Advocate Santosh Kumar Shukla, contended that his client has been falsely implicated in the instant case. He added that the FIR was lodged seven days after the incident, that the applicant was not named in the FIR, and that there are no independent witnesses in the case..On the other side, AGA for the State could not satisfactorily dispute the aforesaid submissions from the record, as he did not have any instructions from the police authorities. This prompted the Court to take a serious view of the failure on the part of police authorities to provide instructions to government counsel on time. .The Court accordingly agreed with the submissions of the applicant and granted bail to the accused, subject to a number of conditions..[Read order]