Source : Indian Legal The Supreme Court has set aside a plea seeking direction to state governments to stop the influx of undertrials to prisons and implement orders of the Apex Court in an earlier case ( Re: Contagion of COVID-19 Virus in Prisons and Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar). The bench comprising Chief Justice of India S.A. Bobde, Justices A.S. Bopanna and V. Ramasubramanian gave the petitioners’ liberty to file a fresh plea with concrete facts. The petition was filed by Ameya Bokil and Surjana Bej. The petitioners had submitted that the apex court in an earlier case (Re: Contagion of Covid19 Virus in Prisons) had directed each state/union territory to constitute a high-powered committee to determine the class of under trial prisoners who can be released on interim bail. The court entrusted discretion to HPC for determining the class of prisoners. Committees were constituted in all the states and passed directions setting parameters for the release of both under-trial prison inmates as well as convicts. However, despite the efforts of the HPCs, the overall prison population did not come down significantly and the number of infected prisoners kept increasing in prisons all over the country. The petitioners urged the court to pass directions to restrain the police from making arrests of persons accused of offences carrying a maximum sentence of seven years in accordance with the decision of the Supreme Court in Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar case. They further prayed seeking directions to grant bail/extend the release of all prisoners granted interim bail by taking into account the recommendations of the HPCs and to extend the release of all prisoners granted interim parole, and also consider cases for premature release.