After 54 yrs in jail, some relief for Lalung

Assam’s Machal Lalung, in custody for 54 years without any case against him nor any record of the crime he had allegedly committed, got...

Assam’s Machal Lalung, in custody for 54 years without any case against him nor any record of the crime he had allegedly committed, got interim relief today from the Supreme Court which ordered that he be granted Rs 3 lakh and a monthly pension of Rs 1,000 from the state government.

Machal Lalung’s case, which shocked the nation, was taken up by the Supreme Court as a PIL on the basis of a report in The Indian Express, narrating the plight of the man who was behind bars since 1951 and enlarged on a personal bond of a rupee after the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), during its routine visit to prisons, found the case.

A bench of Chief Justice Y K Sabharwal, Justices C K Thakker and Raja Varadarajulu Raveendran today ordered the formation of a committee, comprising the Gauhati High Court registrar general or a judicial officer to be nominated by the High Court Chief Justice and a Secretary-level officer of the state government, to conduct a probe, fix responsibility on officials for the gross miscarriage of justice.

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Both the High Court and the state government stated before the apex bench that there was no record traceable in the case.

Machal Lalung, now said to be man of “sound mind”, had in fact lost his mental balance during incarceration. The apex bench also discharged the case.

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