Darpan letter · No. 2414 October 2026

The lawyer who came late

On undertrials who wait 171 days for a free lawyer, bail that is won or lost in the first weeks, the Kural on the ruler who is hard to reach, Tulsīdās on the dharma of another’s good, and an aspirant who will one day hold the key to someone’s first hearing

प्रिय साथी,

Imagine a man of 29 who works for daily wages. He studied up to primary school. One evening he is arrested on a small charge, and the next day he stands before a magistrate. He has no lawyer, he does not know that he may ask for bail, and nobody in that room tells him. He goes back to jail. Today’s magazine says that, in one careful study, a man like him waited on average 171 days, more than five months, before free legal help reached him. This letter is about those five months, and about you, because one day you may be the officer who decides whether they happen.

The facts first. A Data Point analysis in The Hindu looked at the records of over 22,000 undertrials helped between 2018 and 2023 by a legal aid programme in eight Maharashtra prisons, run by Prayas (TISS) and the Fair Trial Fellowship (NLU Delhi). The typical participant is 29; close to half studied only to primary school; 57% are casual wage workers. Once the programme reached them, things changed sharply. Before intake, only about 1% to 6% of them had got bail; after intake, 61% to 92% did. Across 29 districts, 84% of participants’ bail applications succeeded, against 26% of all applications in the same courts between 2015 and 2020. The authors are honest that participants were not chosen at random, so this is a description, not proof of cause. But one finding rests on the prisoners’ own dates: help came, on average, after 171 days. The ones bailed then spent a further 115 days inside.

Notice what this means. The law already says the right thing. Article 39A asks the State to provide free legal aid. Article 22(1) gives every arrested person the right to consult a lawyer. In Khatri v State of Bihar (1981) the Supreme Court held that the duty to provide aid begins at first production, the very first time the accused stands before a magistrate. Under Section 12 of the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, anyone in custody is entitled to free legal services, whatever his income. Nothing is missing on paper. What is missing is the hour. The right arrives, but it arrives after the moment it was meant for.

Tiruvaḷḷuvar wrote a whole chapter on just government, செங்கோன்மை, “the straight sceptre”. Its first couplet defines justice in a way any district judge would recognise: ஓர்ந்துகண் ணோடாது இறைபுரிந்து யார்மாட்டும் தேர்ந்துசெய் வஃதே முறை — “To examine with care, to show no favour to anyone, to hold the balance even, and to act after due thought: that is justice” (Tirukkural 541). Every one of those steps needs someone to speak for the accused. A magistrate cannot weigh a bail plea that was never made. An even balance, with nobody standing on one side of it, is not even.

A few couplets later the Kural says something sharper: எண்பதத்தான் ஓரா முறைசெய்யா மன்னவன் தண்பதத்தான் தானே கெடும் — “A ruler who is hard to reach, and who does not examine and do justice, will sink low and bring ruin on himself” (Tirukkural 548). Read “hard to reach” with the jail in mind. For a casual labourer behind a locked gate, the whole system of justice is hard to reach: the court is across the city, the lawyer visits once a month, and the form for bail is in a language he cannot read. Tiruvaḷḷuvar puts accessibility inside the definition of good rule. A just State is not only one that decides fairly; it is one that the weakest person can actually get to.

The cost of that distance is not abstract. The study matched participants with similar workers in the Periodic Labour Force Survey. From arrest to release, the estimated wages lost reach up to about ₹2 lakh for some age groups, while more than 60% of participants earn under ₹80,000 a year. The authors call these upper-bound estimates; even if you halve them, they are months of a family’s food. A wife borrows to pay rent. A child leaves school to work. Five months in jail for a small charge can punish a whole household before any court has said the man did anything at all.

Tulsīdās puts the moral heart of this in two lines. In the Uttar Kāṇḍ, Śrī Rāma tells Bharata what separates the good from the wicked, and then says: पर हित सरिस धर्म नहिं भाई। पर पीड़ा सम नहिं अधमाई॥ निर्नय सकल पुरान बेद कर। कहेउँ तात जानहिं कोबिद नर॥ — “Brother, there is no dharma equal to doing good to others, and nothing so low as causing pain to others. This is the settled verdict of all the Purāṇas and the Vedas; I tell it to you, dear one, as the wise know it” (Rāmcharitmānas, Uttar Kāṇḍ, after Dohā 40). Notice that Rāma does not say only “do not cause pain”. He puts doing good first. A system can cause great pain without anyone in it doing anything wrong, simply because each person waits for someone else to act.

That is exactly what today’s analysis finds. Four offices hold the chain. The police decide the arrest; the magistrate decides remand; the District Legal Services Authority decides how often its lawyers visit; the jail superintendent knows who has been inside too long. Each does its own job, and the man still waits 171 days. No one caused his pain on purpose. But no one owned his good either. The Supreme Court seemed to see this when, on 23 August 2024, it told jail superintendents to move applications themselves under Section 479 of the BNSS, which requires an undertrial held for half the maximum sentence to be released on bail, and a first-time offender to be released on bond after one-third (offences punishable with death or life imprisonment are excluded). It named one official. That is the lesson: a duty with no owner and no clock becomes nobody’s duty.

There is an honest other side, and you should be able to state it. District Legal Services Authorities are stretched; a lawyer at every remand hearing in every court needs money and people that many districts do not have. NALSA’s full-time Legal Aid Defence Counsel, begun in 2022, saw contract renewals halted in August 2026 pending a review. Faster bail pleas alone will not empty the jails, because courts must still weigh flight risk and many poor accused cannot furnish sureties. All of this is true. None of it changes the timing finding. The answer to scarce lawyers is to send them where they matter most, which is the first hearing, not the fifth month.

Now, why write this to you? Because the ideal you are preparing to serve is a voice for those who have none. In a few years you may sit as a District Magistrate who chairs meetings with the jail, a Superintendent of Police whose stations make the arrests, or an officer who decides a district’s budget. Some of you will join the judicial services and become the Secretary of a DLSA yourself. On that day, no newspaper will tell you that a man in Barrack 4 has waited five months. The Kural’s test will be quietly in front of you: are you easy to reach? Is your office one that the poorest person in the district can actually get to?

For your preparation. In GS2 this card belongs with Article 39A (inserted by the 42nd Amendment, 1976), Article 22(1), Hussainara Khatoon v State of Bihar (1979), which read speedy trial into Article 21, and Khatri (1981) on aid from first production; the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, with NALSA, State and District Legal Services Authorities; and Section 479 BNSS. Two clean way-forward points carry marks: a daily jail-admissions list sent to the DLSA, and a legal aid counsel rostered in every remand court. In GS4, Kural 548 opens any answer on accessibility in public service, and “पर हित सरिस धर्म नहिं भाई” any answer on compassion towards the weaker sections. For the Essay paper, “Justice that comes late is justice denied” is a live theme, and today you have a number to prove it.

And now about you. You too know what it is to wait for help that comes late: the doubt that nobody cleared in time, the friend who explained the concept only after the test. Today, do two things. First, take one topic you have postponed for weeks and settle it before you sleep; delay is a habit, and so is promptness. Second, think of one person near you who is stuck and does not know how to ask: a junior who is lost in the syllabus, a cousin with a form to fill, a worker in your lane with a problem at the ration shop. Reach them first, before they reach out. Practise being easy to reach now, so that it is already your nature when the office and the files arrive.

The law has already promised the man in the district jail a lawyer. What he needs is for that promise to arrive at his first hearing and not in his sixth month. Make your own help like that: early, near, and easy to reach. Of all the good you will do in service, much of it will lie simply in being there in time.

— आपका साथी, दर्पण

Sources: Tirukkural 541 · Tirukkural 548 · Rāmcharitmānas, Uttar Kāṇḍ, chaupāī 1 after Dohā 40