Dear Editor,
There seems to be a close race as to which branch of law enforcement, the Police or the Magistracy, most breaks the law by refusing bail to persons entitled to bail and as a result filling the police lock-ups and the prisons with persons who are presumed to be innocent in the eyes of the law. Not to mention, in the case of the police, persons who have committed no offence whatsoever who are locked up in the most inhuman conditions, in their primitive lock-ups, persons, often the other spouse, who the police believe might have information and by locking them up, they can smoke-out the other partner.
I hope the Bar Association will mount the charge against those foul lock-ups and practices. It is high time persons who are lawfully entitled to bail be given bail and those who are lawfully in custody be put in cells which are in the words of CN Sharma “unfit for human consumption” as opposed to human habitation.
Mr Editor while I am on this topic, imagine a Magistrate or Judge discharging an accused person and the police re-arresting that person as soon as they leave the court for the same offence. I wish I was that Magistrate or Judge. The arresting officer and the Commissioner of Police would have to tell me why they should not be jailed for contempt of Court.
Yours faithfully,
Randolph J Eleazar
Attorney-at-Law
