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How bail is calculated

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Gayatri Jayaraman
Gayatri JayaramanJul 24, 2015 | 17:09

How bail is calculated

It is argued that the issuance of bail is an arbitrary thing. Flippant accusation. Bail is, in fact, decided by a complex mathematical code that uses a hybrid of the Fibonacci Sequence and the Duckworth-Lewis method. That is, two steps back for each step forward, and the statistical analysis of your wickets in hand, in proportion to the number of your court dates. Wickets being anything from number of children's birthdays, to prevalence of mental illness, to examinations, pending shoots or simply the need to buy glasses. This, of course, differs from person to person depending upon that inscrutable element called the weather. When Sanjay Dutt for instance needs to attend birthday parties, or festivals, or tend to his ailing wife, or eat modaks at the Siddhivinayak Temple, or simply just flaunt his abs, because come on now... Every film star needs his audience... He just saunters on home. Manu Sharma, who killed Jessica Lal, was on furlough to attend his own wedding on April 22. Like Abu Salem, who wed his sweetheart on a train to Lucknow, he too has the mysterious art of romancing women without ever having left jail premises. Then you have Babu Bajirangi, sixth time bail champion of the world, who, having been accorded life imprisonment in the Naroda Patiya massacre, has been out on 125 days of bail since conviction to have his vision checked up on. Because while you can help murder 97 men, you can't not see the bars of your prison cell... Now that's just cruel. And so, Italian marines who kill fishermen go home to open Christmas presents, because you know, what Jesus really wants for his birthday is for murderers to sing him carols. And for Salman Khan, bail is what they're now calling the interval between two film releases, and the court now rejects anticipatory arrest pleas to save on paperwork. For Teesta Setalvad, who seems to be facing pretty foul weather - must be all that five thousand rupees worth of Roman hairspray hitting the exosphere in a cloud whose thunder sounds very like 119 convictions screaming bloody vengeance - bail is set by a third umpire run rogue. The last time the Duckworth-Lewis was adjusted was in 2003. Now we just tweak the rain.

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Last updated: July 25, 2015 | 12:11
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