Hours be­fore the Bail Amend­ment (2024) Bill was passed in the Up­per House, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Suni­ty Ma­haraj said the bill would get her sup­port, al­though it pained her to do so. 

Dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion, she called for more ef­fort from state agen­cies to use the pow­er giv­en to them to in­crease con­vic­tions and not mere­ly ar­rests.

“The po­lice ser­vice has to un­der­stand what we are sac­ri­fic­ing to give them this and that we have ex­pec­ta­tions of them and their per­for­mance,” she said, adding that the po­lice should re­port on the in­creased con­vic­tions with the pas­sage of the bill. 

“The po­lice must al­so show how the bill al­lowed them to build cas­es against gangs and those ac­cused of se­ri­ous of­fens­es,”  she said. Ma­haraj added that it will show that the leg­is­la­tion may no longer be need­ed then, as the po­lice would have got­ten them­selves to a point where they can “ac­tu­al­ly de­tect crime, build a case, have the ev­i­dence, and have peo­ple in jail.” 

“I do be­lieve that any of us who are alive is be­cause no­body wants us dead bad enough. So the po­lice must know that they are un­der watch by us. This Par­lia­ment, we have gone and giv­en them a piece of some­thing, a sa­cred right, a right to lib­er­ty.” 

In his con­tri­bu­tion, Dr Paul Richards yes­ter­day ap­pealed to Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress the oth­er as­pects af­fect­ing crime, say­ing that the bail bill was not a panacea. 

Richards said this ver­sion of the leg­is­la­tion will get sup­port from both the Op­po­si­tion and in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors as it strikes a bal­ance be­tween the rights of the ac­cused and the pro­tec­tion of the cit­i­zens. 

The bill, which re­quires a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty, was passed with op­po­si­tion sup­port in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Mon­day.

“Bail is not a panacea,” he said, adding that with­in eight years, 36 per cent of crimes were de­tect­ed, lead­ing to ar­rests and charges with a 5.7 per cent con­vic­tion rate. 

He said that with such a “poor track record,” those who were charged and not con­vict­ed were back out on the streets. 

“A lot of this is not on­ly on the courts and bail and the op­tion of bail,” he said, adding that the po­lice ser­vice is a crit­i­cal part in ad­dress­ing crime. 

Echo­ing the con­tri­bu­tion of Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al, he said the bill was on­ly one mea­sure in re­duc­ing crime.

It is one step “in a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary and com­plex ap­proach” to deal­ing with crime, he said. 

Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al spent her time re­mind­ing that it was the Op­po­si­tion that forced the Gov­ern­ment to make amend­ments to the leg­is­la­tion and bring it back to Par­lia­ment. 

Pok­ing holes in the AG’s ar­gu­ment that leg­is­la­tion is need­ed to ad­dress re­cidi­vism, she point­ed out that there are many rea­sons for re­peat of­fend­ers.  She re­called one mur­der case where the ac­cused were grant­ed bail be­cause, af­ter a year, the pros­e­cu­tor had not been as­signed, the foren­sic re­port on the gun was not yet com­plet­ed, and that was a key part of the case against them, and wit­ness state­ments were not yet ready, a year af­ter the men were charged. 

“The rea­son the peo­ple are get­ting bail is not Jayan­ti fault. It’s not Kam­la fault. It’s not Anand fault. It’s not UNC fault. It is a fail­ure of var­i­ous in­sti­tu­tions of the state. And un­less you ad­dress those things, you are not go­ing to have this au­to­mat­ic or this high lev­el of bail de­nial that you seem so thirsty for.” 

She said if the Gov­ern­ment wants the ju­di­cia­ry to de­ny bail to the ac­cused, they must put things in place so that ju­di­cial of­fi­cers have no choice but to de­ny bail. The Bail Bill was passed in the Sen­ate with all 30 mem­bers vot­ing yes. There were no ab­sten­tions or votes against.