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VIEWPOINT: FIFTH COLUMN
The Backlog Bane
Whether
it is the Uphaar or Jessica Lal case, justice is delayed and thus denied
By Tavleen Singh
A Canadian
television team tried to get me to say on camera last week that the Indian
justice system was evil. They came to seek my comments on the contract
killing of a young Canadian Sikh girl executed with the collusion of a
Punjab Police officer and they feared that justice would not be done because
of the slowness and corruption of our justice system. I hesitated to use
the word evil on camera. I admitted that the system was corrupt, ineffectual,
malleable and thereby unjust but balked at using the word evil. A few
days later came the fourth anniversary of the Uphaar tragedy with no sign
of justice for the 59 victims who died so needlessly and I realised that
I had been wrong to hesitate.
The word "evil" is the appropriate
one to describe our justice system. Just take the Uphaar case. At the
rate at which it is proceeding, it will be 20 years before justice is
done. Fifty-nine people-many of them women and children-died because of
the criminal negligence of the cinema management and the Delhi government.
Safety standards were not met, contingency plans did not exist and when
people tried to escape the poisonous fumes that filled the cinema hall,
they found the exit doors closed. To date nobody has been punished and
by the time they are, it may cease to matter. The trial is proceeding
so slowly that even the process of recording evidence is nowhere near
complete. Of the 170 witnesses, only four have given evidence so far.
 As
if to remind us that our justice system is just a sham, Timothy McVeigh
was executed last Monday, two days before the fourth anniversary of the
Uphaar tragedy. McVeigh who killed 168 people by bombing a government
building in Oklahoma on April 19, 1995, had to be tracked down and brought
to justice and yet the law has completed its course. In the Uphaar case,
we had a list of alleged culprits from day one, but that does not appear
to have helped our courts move faster. Nor have they been affected by
the public importance of the case. So despite the promises of the Delhi
government only seven of the city's 67 cinemas meet safety standards and
nobody cares because they know that in India the law almost never catches
up with you.
Even terrorists remain "under trial"
for years. In the Indian Airlines hijack case, we faced the humiliation
of releasing terrorists who had been in jail for nearly five years. In
the Jessica Lal case, it has taken so long for the trial to begin that
we no longer have witnesses prepared to admit that they saw Manu Sharma
pull the trigger. In corruption cases, the law takes "its own course"
so slowly that we are among the most corrupt countries in the world. Things
are now so bad that Union Law Minister Arun Jaitley himself admits "judicial
independence is being used to safeguard judicial inefficiency".
In statistical terms this means a backlog of
cases that, according to some estimates, will take 324 years to clear.
The Supreme Court has improved its performance in the past 10 years and
reduced its backlog of pending cases from 1,05,000 to 21,936 but the lower
we go the uglier the picture becomes. The high courts have almost doubled
their backlog in the past decade from 1.9 million cases in the early 1990s
to 3.4 million today. Lower courts have a backlog of more than 20 million
cases. So what is the minister doing about this horrendous state of affairs?
Well, according to him, he has already suggested
amendments to the Civil Procedure Code which should be approved in the
next session of Parliament. When implemented they should reduce the period
of a civil trial to less than a year. The amendments seek to make it possible
for courts to use modern methods of communication-instead of just postmen-to
serve notices. They also make it possible for advocate commissioners to
record evidence on a day-to-day basis, reducing to less than 60 days a
procedure that can take years. Also, there is a proposal to make it compulsory-except
in unusual circumstances-for judgements to be delivered within 30 days.
But civil cases are only a third of the problem
since two-thirds of the cases in Indian courts are criminal. Here, the
problem is more complicated so an expert committee has been appointed
to suggest changes. The Central Government has also agreed to set up 1,734
"fast track" courts-five in every district of India-and identified
laws under which there are the largest number of pending cases.
So can we hope to see real change in the justice
system soon? Not yet, because although the Government appears to be doing
its bit, there are no signs that the judiciary is making any attempt to
put its house in order. Perhaps, the chief justice can tell us why before
he retires in October.
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