After Supreme Court granted bail to journalist Siddique Kappan in the UAPA (Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act) case on September 9, last Friday, the Allahabad High Court also granted bail in the alleged money laundering case under the PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act), thus allowing him to step out of the Tihar jail walls after languishing for two long years.
But according to Kappan’s lawyer Mohamed Danish K S, Kappan’s release is taking time, thanks to the cumbersome bail process.
When Kappan was granted bail for the UAPA case, he was finding difficulties in getting two local sureties. A surety is a person that assures the defendant will attend his or her court hearing after being granted bail.
When news broke out regarding this, former acting vice chancellor at Lucknow University Roop Rekha Verma (79) came forward and offered her car as surety. Another person offered their bank account and became the second local.
Speaking to Scroll.in, Danish said that the court is yet to summon those standing as sureties in the UAPA case. “After that bail bond will be issued and Kappan has to surrender his passport,” he said.
For the PMLA case, Danish says that they are yet to find local sureties, after the Allahabad HC granted Kappan bail in the case on December 23.
Court holidays are also a problem resulting in the delay. All courts are closed till January 2, 2023, and Kappan’s lawyers are working hard to get him released before the new year.
Kappan’s co-accused Mohammed Alam also faces similar troubles. Being the first one to get bail approved in October, Alam is still living behind the bars because of slow-moving government officials.
Scroll.in got in touch with Alam’s brother Shoaib Khan who has been making never-ending trips to the offices of tehsildars in order to stamp the bail documents.
Shoaib said that the court ordered to pay a surety of Rs 50,000 and Rs 200,000 for Alam’s bail. Not from a secured financial background, Alam’s extended family members came forward and successfully fulfilled the bail conditions.
But the family’s woes did not end there. The Lucknow court forwarded the documents for verification to police and revenue officials in Rampur district, who in turn passed them to tehsil-level officials.
Shoiab is now running from one tehsildar office to another, facing unresponsive and uninterested faces. “The clerks at the tehsil office who are responsible for verifying and stamping documents would not be there whenever I went to meet them,” he told Scroll.in. “They spent weeks on each surety.”
Lawyer Sheeran Alvi who has been tracking the case, such conditions are a nightmare for someone coming from an ordinary background. “These conditions run against the basic idea of bail being issued to safeguard the liberty of an individual,” she said.
