IN DELHI
AN INDIAN court has delivered a guilty verdict within ten days of murder charges being framed, a record speed for delivering justice in a nation known for prolonged judicial delays.
A district court in northern India found Sunil Kumar guilty of brutally killing his wife, Kiran on February 17 after just three hearings. Kumar was convicted on the basis of the statement of his eight-year-old son, who said he saw his father hitting his mother with a rod.
The case drew front-page attention in national newspapers because the Indian judicial system is notoriously slow and cases go on for years; decades in worst cases.
Take, for instance, the cinema hall tragedy in the national capital over a decade ago. In 1997, the famous Uphaar Cinema in a posh south Delhi neighbourhood caught fire broke due to a short circuit leaving 59 people dead and 103 injured.
It took 10 years before a trial court pronounced judgement, convicting 12 people, including the owners of the theatre, millionaire brothers Sushil and Gopal Ansal, for negligence, causing death and not ensuring safety of the theatre.
The corrupt municipality, electricity department and Delhi police officials, who gave the no-objection certificate to the theatre without proper inspection of safety norms, were also found guilty.
Even this conviction, despite the long delay, was achieved because the relatives of the victims came together under the banner 'Association of the Victims of Uphaar Tragedy' to fight for justice. Their opponents were the mighty people — the Ansals, Delhi police, Municipal Corporation of Delhi and the Delhi Electricity Board.
"We knew the Ansals could manage the police investigation and hire big lawyers. So we had to be united," said Mrs Neelam Krishnamurthi, who lost her 17-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son in the tragedy.
For 10 years, Mrs Krishnamurthi attended the court cases on each hearing regularly. She recalled: "Their goons used to threaten me. They used all kinds of abusive language in the court premises. Even a lady lawyer who happens to be the president of the bar association threatened me not to come to the court."
The threatening stopped only after she complained to the police.
Or take the case of model Jessica Lal murder. An upcoming model, Lal, who was tending bar at the upmarket Tamarind Court in Delhi, was shot dead in April 1999 by Manu Sharma, son of a former state minister, when she refused to serve him liquor after closing time.
A trial court had acquitted all the nine accused in early 2006, but the police were forced to challenge the acquittal after a public outcry. The High Court, which re-opened the case, sentenced Sharma to life term.
The long delays in dispensing justice has seriously eroded the faith of the public in the the country's legal system. Many say that only fools approach courts as the only beneficiaries are the lawyers.
The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC), a non-governmental organisation, in a written statement to the National Human Rights Commission, said: “A decade of waiting is not much time in deciding a case in India. It is equally applicable to civil and criminal trials. The legal process in India is always protracted, with parties being made to spend an unlimited amount of money and to run from one place to another in pursuing their claims in court.”
According to Law Minister HR Bharadwaj, the Supreme Court has approximately 48,800 pending cases while the High Courts across the country have a backlog of nearly 3.9 million cases.
The lower courts, he added in a damning statement about the legal system in response to a question in parliament in December, has nearly 25 million cases.
The Delhi High Court, the capital's top court, for instance is so far behind in its work that it would take up to 466 years to clear the enormous backlog, the court's Chief Justice AP Shah said in his annual report release in February.
The Delhi High Court rushes through each case in an average of four minutes and 55 seconds but still has tens of thousands of cases pending, including upward of 600 that are more than 20-years-old, according to the report.
"It's a completely collapsed system," Supreme Court lawyer and leading civil rights activist Prashant Bhushan said. "This country only lives under the illusion that there is a judicial system."
Minister Bharadwaj attributed 29 reasons for the huge backlog of cases, including long-winded judgements, un-punctual judges and vacancies.
"We are grappling with the problem of pendency. I have no power to tell a judge to write a short judgement or this or that," he said, adding, "A judge and his judicial conviction determine a judgement. I can't whisper in his ear. A judge is left to function on his own."
With pressure mounting for speedy justice, the government has initiated various steps, including setting up of fast-track courts, evening courts, 'Lok Adalats', or courts set up by legal services committees to amicably settle cases between two parties, and conciliation and mediation centres.
While these measures have helped to some extent in the speedy disposal of justice, they have still not made a dent on the huge backlog of cases because of thousands of new cases being filed every day.
In that background, the Chandigarh judge has indeed set a record.
"It is a ray of hope for thousands of victims and a warning for those who exploit the loopholes in criminal justice system," a local criminal lawyer NK Nanda, was quoted as saying in The Times of India.
But more such speedy judgements are needed if people's faith in the country's judicial system is to be restored.