Bangladesh News

Although the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) was amended three years ago to provide for deducting from the prison sentence the period spent behind bars before the judgment, many convicts have yet to gain from it for lack of coordination between the authorities concerned.

The home ministry itself took 32 months to inform the prisons directorate about the amendment. The prisons headquarters officially received the notification in February and informed authorities of the country’s 66 prisons of it the following month.

Many prisoners have to serve more time than the period of their sentences, as there is barely any communication between the jail authorities, courts and prisoners’ counsels.

Due to lack of coordination, officials of different jails now depend on the inmates to know for how many days they have been to prison.

Section 35A of the CrPC too would provide for deducting from a convict’s sentence the time he/she has spent in jail before the judgment.

But it would not apply to the ones convicted of an offence punishable only by death.

Besides, the deduction then depended solely on the will of the court, as it was not obligatory for the courts to exercise this power.

By introducing the amendment to the CrPC in July 2003, the government made it a compulsory provision for the judges to follow.

The jail authorities apply the amendment only to those cases where the courts in their verdicts have referred to the matter.

But there exists many an instance where the courts did not mention anything about the deduction and most of the prison authorities do not go by the amendment.

An accused in a case filed in Dhaka in 2000 was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment in 2003. In its verdict, the court mentioned that the punishment would begin to apply from the day the judgment was pronounced.

Since the prisoner served three years in custody before the verdict, he moved an appeal with the jail authorities for lopping this three years off his sentence.

Another convict, who came out of jail last year after serving out his three-year imprisonment, did not know about the CrPC amendment. As he had already spent two and a half years in custody before delivery of the verdict, two and a half years of the next three years he served had turned out to be in excess of his original sentence.

Many of the prison authorities seem reluctant to deduct the period themselves. “How can we do it if the courts don’t mention it clearly in the jail warrant?” questioned a jail superintendent.

Some jail supers admitted to The Daily Star that they received the gazette notification on the amendment in March this year.

Some of them said they still do not follow the provision, as the courts often avoid mentioning anything about deduction of terms in their orders.

“Now what about those who have already served out their terms and been deprived of the benefit offered by this amendment? The notification shows it was published on July 8, 2003 whereas we got it only in March this year,” said a senior jail superintendent.

It is the responsibility of the lawyers to inform the courts if their clients had been detained before being found guilty.

The lawyers appointed by the government for the accused who cannot afford a counsel, often do not mention it before the court and thus the court do not bring it up in the verdict.

There are however some examples where the court did not mention the deduction, still the jail authorities had brought the matter to the courts’ attention and eventually, had the sentence cut short.

Meantime, the prison authorities sometimes do not have correct and updated information about the convicts’ state of custody. “It happens mostly to the prisoners transferred from one jail to another and in the cases where the prisoners had been convicted after a period of being on bail,” said a jailer.

Admitting it, Inspector General of Prisons Brigadier General Zakir Hasan said, ” We now check whether a convict was in the custody earlier. If the courts forget to mention it, we bring it to their attention.”

The Jatiya Sangsad on July 6, 2003 passed the Code of Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Bill, 2003 and the government published a gazette notification two days later, providing for deduction of the period an accused serves in jail custody from the term of imprisonment handed down by the court.

If the total period of the custody prior to conviction is longer than the period of imprisonment, the accused shall be released at once and if the accused is also sentenced to pay any fine in addition to such sentence, the fine shall stand remitted, it said.

Law Minister Moudud Ahmed, while introducing the bill before the parliament, said the amendment to the CrPC would substantially reduce the government expenditure and scale down the existing cramped conditions in jails.