# Three to Ten Years

*A documented case, told from the first judgment of India's Supreme Court in
the Bihar undertrials case.*

In January 1979 an Indian newspaper reported that people were being held in
the jails of Bihar awaiting trial. When the Supreme Court took up the case,
the State of Bihar did not appear, and the Court proceeded on those reports.
The prisoners were held on charges which, the Court said, even if proved
would not warrant punishment for more than a few months, perhaps a year or
two; they had been in jail for periods ranging from three to ten years.[^bihar]

On 12 February 1979 the Court directed that they be released on their own
bond, with no money demanded of them, as an exceptional interim measure,
because some had been held for offences whose punishment would in all
probability be less than the time they had already spent in detention. It
held that a speedy trial, though named nowhere in the Constitution, is part
of the right to life and liberty, since a procedure that holds a person for
years untried cannot be reasonable, fair or just.[^speedy]

No court had convicted them. They were held because they were awaiting a trial
that had not come, and their detention continued from one day to the next.

Part IV is about what the design does to a person and how it notices its own
failures: the protection a disclosure gives, findings about a person's
credibility, the standing a prisoner keeps, where a confined person is put, the
one thing a sentence takes, and the alarms that tell an office it has broken
the rules. Together the chapters show what authority must be current before
anyone is held, what survives confinement, and who must answer when the
authority runs out and the holding goes on.

[^bihar]: *Hussainara Khatoon v. Home Secretary, State of Bihar*, Supreme
    Court of India, 12 February 1979, (1980) 1 SCC 81, [1979] 3 SCR 169, at
    173; [Indian Kanoon](https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1007347/). The Court
    acted on reports in the Indian Express of 8 and 9 January 1979.

[^speedy]: The same judgment, at 179H–180F. A later judgment in the same
    series, of 4 May 1979, is not relied on here.

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By dhilipsiva. Prose: CC BY 4.0.

Canonical: https://dhilipsiva.dev/rights-nobody-has-to-earn/read/part-4-three-to-ten-years/

Source: https://github.com/dhilipsiva/rights-nobody-has-to-earn/blob/main/book-1/part-4-three-to-ten-years.md