DELAYED JUSTICE IN INDIA

                      

In vogue justice delayed is justice denied is a very smooth saying. But it is

not as easy to understand without clarification as to what actually is meant by
the delay in justice.In between seeking justice and deliverance of justice there
are a lot of pre-requisites and formalities of rules and regulations and
prescribed procedures governing proceedings of the court time consuming
but unavoidable for the purpose.

It is rather a precondition governing the procedures that the respondents in

civil matters and accused in the criminal cases be given reasonable
opportunity to defend themselves.Therefore, the delay in justice relates to the
delay in actual deliverance of justice or passing of the final order into the
matter after the round up of the entire proceedings in full conformity of the
prescribed procedures in respect thereof.

Why it takes a long time to give a verdict by our judiciary system?  Here are
some reasons that come to my mind:

 It takes time to prove the guilt as the convicted can move the Supreme
Court.
 The lawyers drag the case for their vested interest. A bad lawyer can
drag the case long; but a good lawyer drags it longer.
 of cases pending in courts are substantially higher than the judiciary
staff. New cases are registered everyday to make matters worse.
According to recent statistics, acknowledged by the former Chief
Justice of India, Justice Bharucha, the judge population ratio is 12 – 13
judges per million.
 Lack of will by the Government to overhaul the judiciary system and
propose corrective measures.
 Lack of infrastructure to deal with evidence.
 The quality of evidence given by witnesses is affected. When a witness
is required to testify for an incident she saw a decade earlier, his
recollection of events will often be tampered by time.
  Lack of basic infrastructure within the entire justice system.

In India, we find that the working of whole of the system is not satisfactory at
all. As a result, there is an inordinate delay in the disposal of cases due to
highly time consuming procedure.The number of cases in the courts is also
increasing day-by-day. The time taken on average case is more than four
years.

The justice as such is becoming costlier, in terms of time and money. Since
the citizens are unable to apply costly lubrication to the parts of mechanism
attached to the system, their work is delayed and justice goes out of their
reach. It is very shameful that as many as 30 million cases are pending in the
Indian courts.

As a matter of fact, the system of law courts that we inherited from the
British rulers has grown of age and needs modification, and these
modifications should be such which suit our needs and convenience. The
modifications should aim at shortening the period of proceedings of the
court, amendment in the rules and regulations governing court proceedings
and simplification of the procedures, so that people’s faith in the legal system
may not finish.

In order to do away with the over burden of the law courts, we should
introduce a scrutiny system for proposed prosecutions so that only the
bonafide cases are okayed for prosecution and sent to courts.

Secondly, a time limit should be fixed for the disposal of cases.

The number of courts should be increased as we are the lowest in the world
on judges per million populations.

The remuneration of the lawyers should be fixed after evaluation of the case
by a competent court officer in consultation with a senior office bearer of the
Bar Association.Unless such steps, to ensure speedy disposal of cases, are not
taken, the present system cannot give a desirable performance