Power concedes nothing without a demand. The struggle for justice must never be adjourned. The forces of injustice do not take vacations. True; justice delayed is justice denied in all the senses.
The strength of our Indian Culture and the society from day immemorial has been that we have the bondage of “our people” and when any justice is perpetrated on one amongst us, we shall not be the silent spectator. But today the situation is being opposite, which comes only to self centarism. It is not recent that delay in trial has emerged as a significant problem in the judicial system. But the attitude of 21st century still hesitates to respond positively to the dialect of hallowed human rights, of the dignity of personhood versus the blatant disregard by the staes of compassion for the undertrials. This contradiction between the human rights on one hand, and the punitive depriviation on the other, is the dilemma of our times. Speedy justice is the sine qua non of the criminal jurisprudence. It not only remains as an important saafeguard against oppressive incarcenation, physical and psychological anxiety and concerns accompanying detention, but it also minimises the possibilities of imparing the ability of an accused to defend himself. Indeed the right to speedy trial is an integral and essential constituent of the Fundamental Right to Life and Liberty enshrined under Artcile 21 of the Constitution of India. In Hussairnra Khatoon vs Home Secretary AIR 1979 SC 1360; 1979 CrLJ 1036 the court has abserved that “prolonged imprisonment was an abrogation of right to speedy trial since every procedure prescribed by law had to pass the test of being fair, just and reasonable.
The question of an hour is How slow a process should litigation be? Should it keep jumping from court to court? The outright answer to my brain atleast is “NO, in straightforward sense”. The litigations should not be perennial. The reason one goes to the court is to get justice. Unfortunately the judicial system in India is based on evidences and facts oand not conscience or morals, so it should be easier, once having the facts at hand, all it needs is arguments and hearing is quicker pronouncement of justice.
Accumulation of cases in law courts has reached a stage, which endangers the very existence of our judicial system. Delay in disposal of cases has assumed the gigantic proportion, shattering the confidence of the litigating public in the capacity of Court to redress their grievances and to grant adequate and timely relief. There are about 10,000 courts in India .Out of these, one Supreme Court, 21 High Courts, 3150 District Courts, 4861 Munsif and 1st class Magistrate courts and 1964 2nd class Magistrate courts are there. Besides, there are many tribunals. There are 4.04 crores cases pending in different district courts across the country while there is a backlog of 34 lacks cases in State High Courts. 1,66,77,657 criminal cases are pending before Magisterial courts and 72,37,495 civil cases are pending in various subordinate courts. As many as 70 percent of these cases are -litigations from villagers. Again some of these cases are as long as 25 to 30 years old. The longer a case runs, the more expensive it becomes to pursue. Within the High Courts, maximum number of cases are pending in Calcutta, Allahabad, Chennai, Mumbai and in Kerala High court. Out of the pending cases in these High Courts, 88 percent are civil cases and only 12 percent are criminal cases. Maximum number of pending cases in lower judiciary are in U.P., Gujrat, Maharashtra, M.P., W.B. and in Karnataka.
To answer the very question “whether the term delayed justice equalizes with the term denied justice? ”, we must go back to the Indian Independence Movement, where we fought with the British and got our Independence. People like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhai Patel, C. Rajagopalachari, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and hundreds of others who are all famous lawyers, served our nation in achieving our goal of independent India. They all maintained the profession in high esteem and followed the principles of justice and true spirit and we still pay our respect to them. As compared to the today’s era, JUSTICE or the legacy of the very subject has only remained a way to accumulate large profits. Today a senior lawyer of Supreme Court or a High Court charge fees as high as Rs. 75000 for just seeking an adjournment and there are cases where lawyers charge Rs. 1 lakh for just a single appearance in courts ignoring the mantle that they are in profession and not in business of making money.
In the words of Dr. Cyrus Das "Justice is a consumer product and must therefore meet the test of confidence, reliability and dependability like any other product if it is to survive market scrutiny. It exists for the citizenry, 'at whose service only the system of justice must work'. Judicial responsibility, accountability and independence are in every sense inseparable. They are, and must be, -- embodied in the institution of the judiciary." Credibility of the judiciary is at stake now due to mounting arrears of cases, delays in disposal and also high cost of obtaining justice. The denial of justice through delay is the biggest mockery of law. It does not amount to mere mockery; the delay in fact kills the entire fabric of justice delivery system of the country.
The incident which took place in the Chennai High Court keeping lawyers on one side and police officials on other has raised a question in my mind as to “WHO IS SUPERIOR”. The noblest of all the professions is the legal profession in not only my but every individual’s sense, and when we consider lawyers as noble, we also expect noble manners and behavior from these people. The above mentioned incident remind me of the days when lawyers went on strike ignoring their basic duty to serve the community along with the professional ethics. To control the situation Chief Justice of India Hon’ble Justice K.G.Balakrishnan, directed Justice B.N. Krishna, a retired Supreme Court Justice to enquire into the matter and submit a report. The enquiries with all the concerned people were made and a report was submitted blaming both the parties, lawyers as well as the police authorities for the UNREST. The lawyers were blamed for their unruly behavior and the police officials for their high handed actions. The incident was a shame for the entire society. Both the parties must have realized that due to this unforeseen circumstance, the very INTEGRITY of LEGAL SYSTEM had come to a stake, lying hundreds of cases unattended and the public sufferings under their feet causing injustice.
In the words of Martin Luther King “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice – everywhere”. There was a time when it was an age of barbarism. Civilization begins to progress through many ups and downs. Today we have reached, so to speak, the culmination of civilization. Justice and the judiciary is the inevitable result of that civilization. But the present day society is a victim to the dilatoriness of the process of justice. People unfortunately fall victim to injustice. They suffer day after day. A major portions of the Indian people are very poor and illiterate as well. They come to the court to get justice by paying their hard-earned money. They pay to advocates, Law clerks day after day, and wait for justice. They pay for court fees and vakalatnama’s and wait for justice. Month after month, year after year passes away- they wait for justice. They become gradually destitute by selling their everything to meet the fees of advocates, law clerks and other expenses and still wait for justice. Sometimes they pass away from the world and never get justice. Dilly-dally policy in the judiciary makes them deprived of having justice. Thus justice remains untouched by many victims in the Indian judicial system. The more they do not get relief, the more they lose their faith in judiciary. As a result, people gradually will take law in their own hand, which will lead a social anarchism. There will be deep darkness of frustration and futility, -- nihilism and cynicism all around. The whole society will be in jeopardy, as the entire judicial system will collapse under its own weight. In the words of K. G. Balakrishnan, Hon'ble Chief Justice of India, ".... the people’s faith in the judicial system will begin to wane, because justice that is delayed is forgotten, excluded and finally discharged …."
Speedy justice is ultimately a question of fairness in the administration of criminal justice. In spite of the efforts of various committees, one amongst whom is the Malimath Committee, no solution to the seed of problem had arrived. Delay in every sense adds to the cost of the litigation in addition to the mental worries. Justice should not only be swift but it should be cheap also. When we count on the administration of justice, the Judiciary is amongst one of the three pillars of the structure called as State. To my knowledge Judiciary is the weakest of three organs. It has neither power of the purse, nor the power of sword, neither money nor patronage nor even physical force to enforce its decisions.
Nothing is so frustrating to the common man as finding that after he has suffered a grievance or a wrong, it takes years to get justice from the courts. Graph of pendency in Judicial Courts maintained a steady upward posture. Taking criminal, civil and other miscellaneous criminal cases as well as no of pending figures of High Courts and the Supreme Court, the pendency of cases in the country is more than two and half crores. Non availability of counsel, non availability of the accused, interlocutory proceedings and other systematic delays (A.R.Antulay vs. UOI, AIR 1992 SC 1701: 1992 Cr.LJ 2717), delay in investigation on account of widespread ramifications of the crime and its designed network either nationally or internationally, crowded court dockets (Kartar Singh vs. State of Punjab, 1994 CrLJ 3139 (SC)), absence of public prosecutors with the number of court cases, presiding Judges proceeding on leave though the cases are fixed for a trial, strikes by the members of bar, counsels seeking adjournments and the list is not to be compressed in a page or two. Where lies the fault of a common man? Is he not worth getting justice? Or is he not valuable enough to exercise his Fundamental rights? The courts are not without blame. Judiciary is in catch 22 situation in between two off quoted sayings: - “Delay defeats Justice” and “Justice hurried is Justice Buried”. To strike a balance that people should get justice and not mere disposal of cases the Court should increase the strength of judges to 50 per million population which was held by Hon’ble Supreme Court in All India Judges Association vs. Union of India, 2002 SC 1752. The directions were reiterated in the case of Brijmohan Lal vs. Union of India (AIR 2002 SC 2096). In P.Ramchandra Rao vs. State of Kranataka, 2002 CrLJ 2547 : AIR 2002 SC 1856 the poor judge – population ratio was described as the root cause for delay in dispensation of justice. While the judge – population ratio was only 10.5 Judges per million the ratio was higher in other countries such as 41.5 in Australia, 50.9 in England, 75.2 in Canada and 107 in the United States. Increase in the strength of judges can be one method to speed up the justice delivery process, but not the final solution. Simplifying the laws and tightening the loose ends in the existing laws are equally important.
Right to Speedy justice is always clubbed with the right to Speedy trial and fair procedure to increase its evidentiary value in the eyes of a common man. The courts have time and again held that these rights has passed through several milestones on the path of constitutional jurisprudence and that the law and procedure had to withstand the tests of Articles 14, 19 and 21 and there must be right, just and fair procedure, not arbitrary, fanciful and oppressive. Since access to justice was an integral part of social justice (State of Haryana vs. Drashana Devi, AIR 1979 SC 855) adequate number of Fast Track Courts with quick procedures needs to be in place. The Fast Track Courts instead of being an ad hoc or a sporadic state effort, needed to be available after adopting a rational basis of ascertaining the total number of pending trials and deployment of proportionate manpower. Vigorous judicial action must no longer be a matter of coincidence but a well thought out responsibility under the Constitution.
Justice A.S. Anand has once observed that “What appears to be certain is that more police, more prisons, more laws, more courts will not achieve the object of bringing about reform in the system of criminal justice and checking out the crime. Giving the victim of crime his rightful place and taking a serious note of his existence, his feelings and his rights with a view to offer redress to him for his “injuries” may in the long run help check the rising graph of crime. Right to speedy justice may have been suggested as a normative justification, yet its translation into matters of detail may be tinged with a lack of realism in understanding the administration of law. However the debate has thrown open choices, more for the executive and fewer to the judicial wing to increase manual and infrastructural supports to render quick justice. The system has to be changed from “speedy trial being an exception and delay a rule” to “speedy trial a rule and delay an exception”. Speedy justice is a component of social justice since the community as a whole is concerned with the criminal being condignly and finally punished within a reasonable time and the innocent being absolved from the inordinate ordeal of criminal proceedings (Babu Singh vs. State of UP, AIR 1978 SC 527: CrLJ 651).
The loud cry for speedy justice has dismantled the horizon of judicial system in India for prolonged injustice inflicted on the common man. In my sense, problem of law and justice, speedy justice more particularly, cannot be resolved overnight. The administration of justice is heading towards a paralyzed coma stage which is leading to backlog of cases spreading a sheet on the cries of wounded common man.
Ramakant Gaur
Advocate
Supreme Court of India.
09810004702
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