Supreme Court questions Executive delay in trial courts

On 13 April, the Supreme Court issued notice in a special leave petition which it described as “a classic case where the right to speedy trial has been thrown to winds”. The Bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and P.B. Varale was hearing an appeal filed by Pappu alias Suhas Kisan Sonwakar who was denied bail by the Bombay High Court. Sonwakar was accused of attempted murder, assault and conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code, 1860. He has been in custody since 1 July 2021 and had sought bail pointing out that the trial in his case was yet to commence. The Bombay High Court had denied bail, reasoning that the trial was delayed due to the unavailability of the accused’s counsel. The Supreme Court refuted that notion. It did so by relying on a single chart drawn from the trial court’s roznama—a daily log maintained by the trial courts, recording each step in a case.

The chart, reproduced from the order, reads as follows.

The chargesheet was filed on 12 November 2021. The trial court registered the case four days later. Dates were fixed 121 times, out of which the accused was not produced on 110 occasions. The court itself was unavailable on 16.

Counsel for Maharashtra attributed the delay to the accused. The Supreme Court refused. It held that the statistics speak for themselves and contradict the State’s submission. While, the Order concedes that the defence counsel was occasionally absent, it was considered immaterial against the dominant pattern of executive non-production. It directed the Home Secretary to submit an affidavit explaining why the accused was hardly produced.

The Bombay High Court (Kolhapur Bench) was shown the same roznama. However, the High Court read it the opposite way and held that defence counsel’s absences had stalled the examination of witnesses. It noted that the charge had already been framed and rejected the application with a direction to the trial court to expedite the trial. There was no engagement with Article 21. No examination of the production statistics. In the 13 April Order, the Supreme Court does not mention the High Court’s reasoning.. But the architecture of its order, by chart, rebuke and affidavit, is a tacit reversal of the inference the High Court drew on the same record.

The order’s deferral of bail has a statutory explanation. Apart from provisions of the IPC, he is also charged under Sections 3(1)(ii), 3(2) and 3(4) of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999. Section 21(4) of MCOCA imposes a twin-test threshold for bail. The Court must record satisfaction that there are reasonable grounds for believing the accused is not guilty. It must also be satisfied that he is unlikely to commit any offence on bail. The Supreme Court reaffirmed this rigour in Jayshree Kanabar v State of Maharashtra (2025). Constitutional courts may grant bail despite the threshold. But they may do so only where bail is expressly founded on a violation of fundamental rights of the Constitution. 

The 13 April Order is laying precisely that foundation. The Home Secretary’s affidavit will form one limb of the Article 21 record. The petitioner’s “long incarceration”, expressly noted by the Bench, will form the other. Together they answer what Jayshree Kanabar requires. The remedy is procedural because the doctrine demands it.

There is a further fact that complicates the picture. It appears in the High Court order but is absent from the Supreme Court’s. The accused’s bail was previously rejected by the Supreme Court itself on merits. The top court’s 13 April Order makes no mention of this. It proceeds as though the question before it were a fresh one. The silence is not necessarily an error. Bail jurisprudence permits successive applications on changed circumstances. Four years of executive non-production is, in any view, a changed circumstance. But the present proceeding is not a clean-slate matter. The Bench is, in effect, reopening a question it has earlier closed. It is doing so on the strength of a record the State itself maintained.

This is the second time in a fortnight that the Supreme Court has called Maharashtra to account on undertrial production. On 1 April, a Bench of Justices Ahsanuddin Amanullah and R. Mahadevan heard the bail petition of Shashi alias Shahi Chikna Vivekanand Jurmani. A single case, with 55 non-productions in 85 hearings, was escalated into a pan-India inquiry. Affidavits were sought from every state, Union Territory and High Court. The Sonwakar order does not refer to that proceeding. It does not need to. The pattern is by now well-attested. What was an aberration in February has become a template by April. 

The Order places accountability on the Home Department rather than on the trial court alone. The placement reflects a settled understanding. Undertrial non-production is an executive failure of escort and prison administration. The A.R. Antulay guidelines on speedy trial converge with the Hussainara Khatoon line on undertrial detention. So does the Supreme Court Legal Aid Committee prescription on bail in long-pending trials. The Court has chosen to invoke none by name. It relies instead on the roznama, treating the record as self-executing proof of constitutional injury.