Justice Delayed is Justice Denied

In the legendary interminable case of “Jarndyce Vs Jarndyce” in Dickens’ “The Bleak House”, characters have grown old, been born into, married into, and been divorced from various plaintiffs and defendants and awaited judgement with fond hope as if to The Last Day of Judgement. In this novel, Charles Dickens brings forth a long-running litigation which is an embodiment of the failures of the Chancery. His depiction of the judiciary as slow and arcane helped to spur an ongoing movement that later led to remarkable legal reforms in the Eighteenth century England. But even now, in the Twenty-first century, the same trend continues.

Pendency has been an all-time dilemma in legal system which is detrimental for the people seeking justice. John Jarndyce, a character in the novel, finds the entire process of court proceedings tiresome and tries to have as little to do with it as he possibly can. He is the perfect epitome of the present-day common people who preferably stay away from the court in fear of losing their lifetime savings to their unending case. The Judiciary is rightly called the shield of innocence and the guardian of civil rights. A good judiciary should be impartial and affordable for all the citizens irrespective of caste, region, sex, linguistic and cultural differences and economic disparity. India, the seventh largest democracy in the world (in terms of area), has an egalitarian society.

The Constitution of India, the supreme legal document of the country, is embellished with the largest number of articles than any other constitution to safeguard the interests of its citizens. But even after 66 years of independence, freedom and equality before law for all citizens of India are still only on paper. Practically, neither freedom nor equality is equally distributed. Many weaker sections of the society, mostly the illiterate ones, are still deprived of these fundamental rights which the Constitution of India guarantees. More than two-third of India’s prisoners are under-trials. Most of them have spent more than half of their lives in the dingy cells of the prison waiting for justice, which under the present system of judiciary is most often will-o’-the-wisp for the common men. Many citizens when wronged approach the court with full energy to get justice. But the unduly long court proceedings eventually deter them from taking the cases any further.

Even if they continue to fight against injustice there are many rich and powerful who never let them win. The jaded commoners are simply fobbed off with false promises of a better future if they withdraw the case. History of Indian court cases is replete with examples which reinforce the adage that delay in justice is injustice. For instance, take the 1999 Jessica Lal murder case. Albeit dozens of witnesses pointed to Manu Sharma, the son of Vinod Sharma, a wealthy and influential Congress-nominated MP from Haryana, as the murderer, he was acquitted on February 2006 by the court on grounds of lack of evidence. It took seven long years for the court to come to a conclusion even though it was wrong.

This shows how the elites suppress the rights of the hoi-polloi and deny justice to them. It was only due to public outcry and intense media pressure that Manu Sharma was finally convicted on December 2006. Take the 1990 Ruchika Girhotra molestation case. This promising tennis player was molested by the then Inspector General of Police, Sambhu Pratap Singh Rathore, in Haryana. After filing a complaint, she was so much harassed by the police that it led to her eventual suicide. But Rathore was convicted on Dec 21, 2009 - after two decades of the crime. It is because the accused was given this much time that he could gather false evidences resulting in lingering of the case for two decades. Another instance is the 1993 Mumbai Blast case. One of the accused and well-known bollywood actor, Sanjay Dutt, was convicted after a long period on 2013. The acquittal of congress leader Sajjan Kumar in 1984 riot case again proves the hold of nefarious politicians, whose sole raison d’être is amassing power and money, over the court’s judgement.

These instances give corroborative evidences of the subjection of judiciary to political and financial clout. This legal maxim framed by British Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, is to some extend vindicated. But it should not be forgotten that in between seeking justice and deliverance of justice there are a lot of pre-requisites, formalities and prescribed procedures governing the court proceedings that need to be followed. These are very time consuming but unavoidable also. For example, it is rather a precondition that every accused be given reasonable chance to defend himself. Even our judiciary is not impeccable. The egregious state of our judiciary, to some extent, can be attributed to the fact that the founding fathers of our nation formulated the Indian Judiciary partly as a continuation of the British legal system. This system of judiciary that we have inherited from the Britishers has aged and isn’t apt for the republic we are today. It requires an urgent modification to suit our needs and convenience. For e.g., in case of “preventive” arrests the arrestees are usually held in jail because they are unable to furnish a satisfactory surety to accompany the bond of “good behaviour”.

This provision was devised by the Britishers to control a restive population at minimum cost to their exchequer. But even now we continue to abide by this rule without any amendments. Instead, this provision should be followed only under certain circumstances; for instance, when the accused possesses danger to the society. Another reason for the poor performance of the judiciary is the lack of proper implementation system and dearth of knowledge about the its functioning among the illiterate lot. But this judicial system is not a fait accompli. Strong and immediate measures should be taken to expedite the court proceedings. Otherwise it will lead to serious ramifications and sound the death knell of justice in India due to vacuous judiciary.

Our judiciary should not simply emulate the British model, rather it should be modified in such a way that deliverance of justice becomes easier. The first measure to improve the judiciary is to free it from the clutches of recalcitrant politicians and the gaudy rich. The functioning of the court should be made transparent . The officers who are complicit in the cover-up of any unlawful act should be heavily penalised. This will deter the interference of malfeasant people in the court proceedings. The witnesses against the powerful should be protected from any duress. Then only the judiciary cannot be cowed down by the wealthy and powerful elites. Secondly, a scrutiny of prosecutions should be done. Depending on various criteria, like severity of the crime, the prosecutions should be prioritised. The cases found serious and demanding an immediate judgement should be attended first.

Thirdly, more Fast Track Courts need to be set up to expeditiously dispose of long pending cases in sessions courts and long pending cases of under-trial prisoners. Fourthly, the number of courts and judges should be increased as our country ranks the lowest in judge to population ratio. The fact is that for every 1,467 Indians, a lawyer is there to take their briefs and for every million Indian population 14 judges help to render justice. There are 2.7 crore cases left pending in the trial courts alone. Fifthly, courts need to be present at the grass-roots level so that the redressing the grievances of the poor in the remote areas of the country becomes easier. All these steps if considered and implemented properly will surely give a much needed fillip to the performance of the Indian judiciary. And, deliverance of justice will surely become unhindered and hence, faster.