LONG DELAYS IN THE INDIAN LEGAL SYSTEM
The old adage that justice delayed is justice denied seems especially apt in India. Delays are one of the biggest problems with the Indian legal system. Civil cases are routinely drown out for more than 10 years. It is not unusual for a case first judged in the 1980s to still be in court.
As of 2000, there were around 25 mullion cases pending and according to one estimate it would take 324 years to clear them all form the docket. This is especially disturbing when you consider that the 90 percent of the cases end in acquittal. One man had to an endure an 18 year trial for improperly changing his voter registration when he moved to a new address.
The New York Times described a case in which a meatcutter sued his neighbor, a milk merchant, for building a brick wall on the edge of his property with a drain that emptied on the meatcutters property. The cases went on for over 40 years and involved several hundred court cases. [Source: Barry Bearak, June 2, 2000]
The initial decision was made relatively quickly in the meatcutter's favor in 1963 but the cases case got bogged down after the milk merchant appealed. The appeal of the case took 13 years to receive a hearing and then was sent back to lower courts, where the cases appeared on the docket once or twice a month but was adjourned or postponed for various reasons. The meatcutter and milk merchant died in the middle of case and the appeal was carried on by their sons.
People in Jail Awaiting Trial
People have spent as long as ten years in prison before they are brought to trial and some of them were arrested for offenses as minor as riding a train without a ticket. The court hearings and police investigation are excruciatingly slow. Even when prisoners are scheduled to appear in court. They don't show up because there aren't enough police officers to escort them form their cells.
The human rights group Asia Watch wrote in a 1991 report on the India judicial and prison system, India may be the "the world's largest democracy...[but] something has gone wrong." A former Indian justice said "the backlog in India is one of the worst in the world. "If the trial is delayed by years, the evidence will disappear." Bail is often denied. [Source: Molly Moore, Washington Post, July 7, 1994]
A 22-year-old Canadian charged with trying smuggle drugs out India told the Washington Post: "Every two weeks, I am herded with 55 people on a bus on a bus meant for 30. We stand in lock up at the court all day with no running water, no toilet. The policemen press their bodies up to bars to rub up against the women. They call you into court. You see the judges piled up with papers falling out everywhere. he doesn't care if I'm 22 and I'm in jail."
One woman had been jailed for six years awaiting a trial for a narcotics charge that usually carries a sentence of two years. Every four months she would make a court appearance, "only to find that witnesses have not appeared, the prosector has not shown up, the lawyers are on strike, or the judge is absent." The court date was inevitable postponed.
Many people don’t go on trial until after they already served the maximum sentence for the crime they have been accused of. In December 1999, a 75-year-old man was released from a Calcutta jail after waiting 37 years to be tried on murder charges. A doctor had found the man to be of unsound mind and he was forgotten.
Indian Court 466 Years Behind Schedule
Even though judges spend about five minutes on cases, the High Court in New Delhi still has thousands of cases pending and is so behind in its work that it could take up to 466 years to clear the enormous backlog, the court's chief justice said in 2009. Associated Press reported: The Delhi High Court races 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. [Source: Associated Press, February 12, 2009]
The problems of the Delhi High Court, which hears civil, criminal, and constitutional cases, is more the standard than the exception in India. The country's creaky judicial system has long been plagued by corruption, inefficiency and lack of accountability, often making the rule of law unattainable for all but the wealthy and the well-connected. The United Nations Development Program says some 20 million legal cases are pending in India. "It's a completely collapsed system," said Prashant Bhushan, a well-known lawyer in New Delhi. "This country only lives under the illusion that there is a judicial system."
Reasons Why Court Cases Are Delayed So Long in India
Why is the process so slow?. Judges are so overworked they routinely grant continuances. Lawyers can slow the process further by misplacing evidence, challenging routine paperwork and not showing up in court. In India, 75 percent of all cases go to trial but there are only 11 judges per million people (compared to 50 to 100 judges per million people in West). To address the long delays, the Indian government has proposed limiting adjournments and appeals, but lawyers say this compromises the rights of the accused.
Associated Press reported: One reason for the delays is that there aren't enough sitting judges. India — a country of 1.1 billion people — has approximately 11 judges for every million people compared with roughly 110 per million in the United States. India's Justice Ministry last year called for an increase of 50 judges per million people by 2013, but it was unclear how the government would pay for such a massive overhaul.[Source: Associated Press, February 12, 2009]
The Delhi High Court, the state's top court, had 32 judges in 2007 and 2008 instead of the allotted 48, according to the chief justice's annual report. The court had at least 629 civil cases and 17 criminal cases pending that were more than 20 years old as of March 2008. Although, that's an improvement from April 2007 when the court had 882 civil and 428 criminal cases pending that were that old.
Critics say other problems include the strict formalities that slow down every step of the legal process and are common across India's vast bureaucracy. Bhushan says the Herculean task of simply registering a case wastes time and denies ordinary citizens access to the court. "All kinds of objections are raised — the copies are dim, the margins are not wide enough, it's single-spaced instead of being double-spaced," he said. "For a layperson, it's impossible."
Verma, the retired Supreme Court judge, said extending working hours would be a major step toward clearing the backlog. The Delhi High Court hears cases for five hours and 15 minutes a day, and is open for 213 working days a year, according to the report. Verma and others said the court could easily work longer hours. "A commitment and proper work culture can solve at least half the problems, if not more," Verma said. "I don't think you would have to wait four centuries to have a case decided."
Corruption in Indian Courts
Associated Press reported: Critics say another major problem is corruption, a plague throughout every layer of Indian government. "Of course corruption is there," said J.S. Verma, a retired Supreme Court justice. "The people who man the courts and the court system come from the society" where corruption is commonplace. [Source: Associated Press, February 12, 2009]
in 2008, the Delhi High Court convicted two senior lawyers for trying to influence a key witness to change his testimony in a high-profile case involving a hit-and-run that left six people dead. The lawyers, who were busted in a sting by a television news channel, received what some called a light punishment: They were barred from appearing in court for four months and fined 2,000 rupees ($50).
The corruption in the case was only notable because one of the lawyers had defended important political figures, said Bhushan "There are plenty of lawyers who are engaged in this business of bribing judges," he said. "It's a lucrative business." The hit-and-run case was another example of the long lag between crime and conviction: the accident occurred in 1999, but the driver was not found guilty until 2008.
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Last updated December 2023