Supreme Court On Legal Help: The Supreme Court has expressed concern over the difficulties faced by jailed prisoners in their release due to lack of legal help. In an important decision, the Supreme Court said that the state and district level legal service authorities should look into the difference between the pending prisoners eligible for release and the bail applications. Those prisoners who are not able to file bail petition should be helped. At the national level also, the National Legal Services Authority should monitor this.
The bench of Justices BR Gavai and KV Vishwanathan has given this decision on the petition of social activist Suhas Chakma. The court has said that there is a system to provide free legal aid to people before and during the trial, but it has not been adequately publicized. All the High Courts should consider that while giving orders on criminal cases, they and the District Courts should give information in one page that the convict/accused can get free legal help from the Legal Aid Committee. Efforts should be made to write the address and number of the Legal Aid Committee along with it.
The court also suggested to implement these things-
1. Boards in local language and English should be put up in public places like police station, post office, bus stand, railway station etc. to inform people that they can get free legal aid. These boards should be placed at such places that they can be easily seen. The address and phone number of the Legal Aid Committee should also be written on the board.
2. Legal aid information should be given in local language on radio and television. For this, help of websites should also be taken.
3. Awareness about legal aid should be spread among people through street plays and other popular cultural mediums.
Lawyers will be given excellent training
The court has said that it will not be enough to inform people about the availability of free legal aid, it should be seen that this help is actually beneficial. For this, it is important that the standard of lawyers associated with free legal aid should also be good. For this, work should be done for better training of legal aid lawyers.
