This order comes after a few days of the Supreme Court’s order on the Elgaar Parishad case, in which 16 writers, lawyers, teachers, journalists, social workers and a priest were detained under sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Indian Penal Code. With one death in custody after refusal of bail, and two grants of bail, 13 people, many of whom have been in prison for four years and the others a few months less, remain incarcerated with their applications for bail refused repeatedly. They were arrested for allegedly delivering inflammatory speeches that supposedly led to the BhimaKoregaon violence in 2017, and were additionally accused of connections to a banned extremist organization, of conspiring against the State and so on. But bail is not the theme of the Supreme Court’s order in this case: it reportedly underlined the fact that no charges had been framed even after four years. The National Investigation Agency, in charge of the investigation, has now been ordered by the Supreme Court to produce the charges that will lead to trial as well as to address discharge applications within three months. While speeding up the justice process, this would establish the importance of following reasonable time-frames. Besides, the Supreme Court’s order reasserts the primacy of legal procedure over all possible extraneous reasons for the delay.

The original piece may be read here