Saturday, 05 Oct, 2024
By: Sutanu Guru
Source: Getty
About 1,35,000 under trials are behind bars and close to 40,000 jail inmates are in jail for more than three years. There is little doubt that many of them would be accused of petty crimes where they would get a sentence of one to three years even if they were convicted.
Two unrelated news developments published in media platforms are a masterfully ironical revelation of the virtual collapse of the Indian judiciary, as far as ordinary citizens are concerned. The first news has appeared everywhere. Luminaries ranging from prime minister Narendra Modi to Chief Justice Y. V. Chandrachud to Supreme Court Bar Association President Kapil Sibal attended a conference on district courts. Everyone who spoke stressed the need for quicker disposal of cases. The other news didn’t get as much space. The Indian Express reported that the Delhi High Court has quashed the eviction notice that the government had issued to the paper over its New Delhi building in 1987. Yes, you read that right: a case that dates back to 1987. Even as the luminaries spoke, the backlog of cases in Indian courts crossed a milestone of 50 million. At current rates of disposal, it will take more than 325 years to clear all the pending cases.
To give a quick background, the eviction notice to Indian Express was given in 1987 when the paper was aggressively reporting on facts related to the Bofors scandal, apart from other instances of cronyism related to corporate houses. The prime minister was Rajiv Gandhi. Since then, India has seen V. P. Singh, Chandrasekhar, P. V. Narashima Rao, H. D. Develop Gowda, I. K. Gujral, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Dr. Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi as prime ministers. Even a junior school child would ask: why did it take so long to do this? Anyone familiar with basics of law and Indian politics would ask: why did successive governments after the Rajiv Gandhi regime not simply withdraw the eviction notice?
If there were any sane and sensible answers, the Indian judiciary would not be in such a sorry state. Just look at the data.
The numbers are appalling. For starters, the total number of cases that are pending beyond 5 years is about 15 million. The number of cases pending beyond 10 years is well above 4 million. The total number of pending criminal cases is about 33 million, more than three times the number of civil cases. More than 500,000 criminal cases have been pending for more than 20 years. This reflects an utter and abject failure on two counts. First, the rich and the influential “game the system” in such a way that cases against them drag on for years; or decades. They enjoy the good life as acquittal or conviction becomes an elusive goal. On the other hand, the poor who are accused of crime remain in jail even as their cases drag on indefinitely. They do not have the resources to try and seek even bail.
In all, about 135,000 under trials are behind bars as their cases go on. Close to 40,000 are in jail for more than three years. There is little doubt that many of them would be accused of petty crimes where they would get a sentence of one to three years even if they were convicted.
In such a situation, it would be futile and even naive to mouth platitudes like justice delayed is justice denied. India has seen some measure of reform in almost every institution. In some, reforms have made life dramatically easier for ordinary citizens. In others, the process has been painfully slow. But when it comes to the Indian judiciary, the reforms have not even begun.
