Hyderabad, July 21: Hymad Pasha, a life convict from Adilabad, who was unduly set free due to a judicial faux pas, was finally brought back to Cherlapalli jail again. It can be recalled that Hymad was convicted for life for causing the death of his wife and was ordered to undergo another three years imprisonment for harassing her for dowry when she was alive by the Adilabad district court earlier.
In a strange turn of events, two appeals were filed against this order and two division benches of the AP High Court heard them simultaneously without knowing that the other bench was hearing it. While one bench confirmed the lower court judgement and asked Hymad to serve a life term in jail in March last year, the other bench acquitted him of murder charge and paved the way for his release on September 29, 2008. Two days later, on October 1 Hymad was set free from Cherlapalli jail.
TOI exposed this faux pas in its December 7, 2008 edition and within a week, the High Court declared its second judgement that set Hymad free as invalid and ordered the authorities to bring Hymad back to jail on December 15.
While nullifying the second judgment, the HC expressed its anguish over the way the internal mechanism of justice delivery system has failed it. In open court, it said: “This Hymad Pasha case has got all the trappings of a crime thriller. At no stage was it brought to our notice that a separate bench was simultaneously hearing it. The public prosecutor, who argued before both the benches, the district judge who sent the case records to High Court twice, the registry which had numbered the case and posted it before two benches and finally the jail superintendent who has two conflicting judgements on his hand when he set Hymad free. It is strange that none of them told us. Its only Times of India’s news item that told us about it. It served as an eye opener to the way the things are going around us”. So saying, the bench ordered an inquiry into this faux pas and directed the registrar general to conduct it and fix responsibility on the concerned.
–Agencies–