In a pilot project, district courts decide 356 of assigned 501 ‘top priority’ criminal cases in under a year. Buoyed by success, state to scale up initiative.
New Delhi: Hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi criticised cow vigilantes for carrying out attacks, a mob intercepted a van being driven by Alimuddin Ansari, a 55-year-old Muslim trader, in Jharkhand’s Ramgarh town, on 29 June, 2017.
Ansari was lynched by the mob, consisting mainly of Bajrang Dal activists, who suspected that he was transporting beef. His van was also set on fire. The incident caused a furore as videos of the assault and photographs of a dazed Ansari made it onto social media.
On 16 April this year, less than nine months since the attack, a district court in Ramgarh sentenced 11 of the 12 accused, including a local BJP leader, to life imprisonment for Ansari’s murder.
Days later on 24 April, a court at Tenughat in the state’s Bokaro district sentenced 10 accused to life in prison for lynching a man they suspected of being a child lifter. Shamsuddin Ansari was killed when he had gone to visit his in-laws at Narra village in Bokaro district, on 4 April, 2017.
That the trials in both cases were completed in less than a year is no coincidence. They are part of a pilot project in Jharkhand to tackle the backlog of cases that have affected law and order in the state.
In October last year, the state police identified 501 criminal cases — including the two lynching incidents — which it deemed were “top priority”. The state then fast-tracked the trials in these cases. And in less than eight months, Jharkhand’s 26 district courts have completed trials in over 356 of these cases. In the remaining ones, the trial is pending since the accused are allegedly absconding.
Directly involving the police at every step has resulted in a conviction rate of 63 per cent; way above the national average of 45 per cent.
Even though the trial in over 140 cases on the list is yet to be completed, emboldened by the success of the pilot project, Jharkhand has decided to scale up the initiative.
On Monday, a fresh list of 1,000 cases was prepared for Phase-2 of the project, Ambuj Nath, registrar of the Jharkhand High Court, told ThePrint. “This kind of huge success in reducing pendency is a first in India. We have exceeded the targets we had set.”
A glimmer of hope
The Indian judiciary’s troubles with case pendency are well-documented. The courts and the government have experimented constantly to reduce the backlog with little or no success. By one estimate, over 70,000 more judges would be required to clear existing cases.
The Jharkhand project could be a bright spot in this grim situation.
The state is unusual in that it has a very high number of pending criminal cases: Of its 3.29 lakh cases, approximately 2.7 lakh are criminal cases, with just over 55,000 civil cases. It also ranks 17 on the list of states with most cases pending in its district and subordinate courts.
The plan to launch the project was drawn up over a year ago in a closed-door meeting between then chief secretary Rajbala Verma, Jharkhand DGP D.K. Pandey, and the acting chief justice of the Jharkhand High Court, Justice D.N. Patel, who has been credited as the brainchild of the initiative.
The state police drew up the list of 501 “top priority” criminal cases, the bulk of which were related to those booked under the state’s Crime Control Act, 2002 — a special law that gives additional powers to a magistrate to tackle “anti-social elements”.
These cases were not sent to specially constituted fast-track courts but were decided in regular district courts; 72 judges were assigned to them.
HC registrar Ambuj Nath periodically reviewed the progress of the cases, often asking the judges to send him status updates in a tabular form.
The way forward
The pilot project has ensured some gains, and not just for the state.
Jharkhand’s decision to prioritise law and order cases is a novel approach. Most ongoing projects in the higher judiciary and lower courts identify the oldest cases in a court and dispose of them first.
“This selection of cases directly boosts public perception, obviously, when you’ve dispensed justice in the most problematic cases. Law and order is something that impacts the common man the most,” said Suryaprakash, fellow and Programme Director at Daksh, a Bengaluru-based research organisation that focuses on the judiciary.
The direct involvement of the police has resulted in the speedy disposal of cases.
“Our experience working with Delhi High Court shows that trials are often delayed by the prosecution seeking adjournments because there are loose ends in the investigation,” Suryaprakash said.
Jharkhand’s success also shows that courts can take control of the life-cycle of a case, contrary to the perception that the advocates who seek adjournments and delay the hearings.
Significantly, Jharkhand’s experience also shows that designating special courts is not necessary to ensure speedy justice. The 501 trials were taken up by judges alongside their usual work and a majority of them were still completed on time.
Special courts are often touted as the panacea for speedy justice although experts have questioned its efficacy. In December last year, even the Supreme Court directed the centre to set up special courts to fast-track cases against lawmakers.
Jharkhand already has 14 special courts where over 2,300 cases are currently pending.
‘Hasty trials not always ideal’
Experts, however, caution against the hasty trials, and doubt if the initiative could be expanded in Jharkhand itself.
“It is usually the civil cases that are pending for long. In them, land disputes over title deeds and cheque bounce cases are the ones that can be quickly decided. Criminal cases do take time, and rightly so, because courts have to evaluate evidence,” Suryaprakash said.
He also added that although low conviction rate in India is a problem, high conviction rates in speedy trials are also worrying. “In an attempt to meet targets and deadlines, courts cannot simply buy what the prosecution offers,” he said.
Alok Prasanna, a senior resident fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, expressed doubts about replicating the project on a large scale in Jharkhand where criminal cases form the majority of those filed.
“The root cause of why so many criminal cases come up needs to be found in police reforms. So, solving even 500 or 1,000 cases in less than a year is not even scratching the surface of the problem,” he said.
A hub of judicial reform
The targeting of law and order cases is not the only attempt that Jharkhand has made in its efforts to reduce the pendency of cases.
In June last year, another special project was undertaken to halve the number of cases that have been pending for over five years. As of 30 June, 2017, there were over 76,000 such cases.
A year later, Jharkhand exceeded its target and disposed of 76 per cent of such cases. By March this year, the district courts had just 18,299 cases that had been filed before June 2016 and had been pending for over five years.
Studies have shown that cases that are usually not disposed of within two-three years get stuck in courts. According to the National Judicial Data Grid, that monitors pendency real time, over 17.83 per cent of cases in Jharkhand’s district courts are pending for more than five years.
Experts doubt this would have any real impact on reducing pendency. “Even if the courts dispose of old cases, new ones will keep coming and the net figures will remain the same. So, courts must identify and address the issues that create this delay in the first place,” said Alok Prasanna of the Vidhi Centre.
Jharkhand also has shown improvement in disposing of simpler cheque bounce cases that often pile up in courts. For June 2017-May 2018, the 26 district courts were tasked to reduce 19,891 such cases by 36 per cent. Again, it exceeded its target disposing of 8,000 cases.
“For disposing of these cases, we didn’t even have a formal plan or allocate additional resources. Justice Patel simply had a video conference with all district court judges,” registrar Ambuj Nath said.
‘Justice delayed is justice denied’ is an accepted adage.Delay in justice breeds contempt for the judicial system and then we paint the entire judiciary with one brush. The colour of that paint is impervious dark BLACK. One may argue that collection of evidence,facts and interpretation of events may get compromised in such a hurry.We also loudly claim that let 99 culprits be let out but not one innocent be punished.Going by the way people are languishing in jails for years together,it may well be argued that 99 innocents are being penalized by keeping them behind the bars.These BARS should be used to BAR the BARRISTERS from making mockery of justice. We see how many witnesses turning hostile in cases of influential and rich persons Most of us have little faith left in the judiciary. It is only that we have no choice and no plausible alternative.I congratulate the Jharkhand experiment.