Without saying Mitro, the Indian Govt has swiftly changed the criminal legal mechanism of the country. The entire nation’s centuries-old criminal law has got changed with the advent of BNS, BNSS, and BHA. (for brevity all three are collectively referred to as “the New Laws”).
The New Laws have come into effect from 1, July 2024 and override the centuries-old IPC, CrpC and Indian Evidence Act. Further, the New Laws are also implemented in ongoing cases. This is quite unusual as new laws are generally applicable to the cases and instances that occurred after their enactment. Nonetheless, the Indian Courts have also given their assent, and there is no scope for a u-turn.
The New Laws are projected as the watershed moment in the Indian legal system. The New Laws are meant to make the entire criminal law mechanism not only accessible but also speedier to reduce the life-span of cases. Of course, there are many facets of these New Laws, however, for brevity, we are restricting the scope of this writing qua the ideal of speedier justice in light of the New Laws. The other aspects may be discussed on the next date of hearing.
Current status qua and speedy justice
In the Indian legal system, it takes years for judges to reach conclusions and deliver judgments that further act as opening battles of appeals and revisions. In the meantime, people ended up investing a substantial part of their lives and finances in the litigation battles. Also on various occasions litigation battles are often continued by the legal heirs of the parties after their demise.
There have been many provisions in the centuries-old criminal justice system to achieve speedier justice, however, the reality has always been on the other side of the sea. The issue lay with the administration side particularly the few judges against millions of cases, and the easy attitude of all the stakeholders especially lawyers to seek adjournment for many reasons and for no reason at all. Last year only, a lawyer had sought adjournment in a criminal trial on the ground that he wasn’t carrying his file before one of the trial courts of the capital of the country – New Delhi. Surprisingly, the judge without even questioning granted a 4-month adjournment, and the justice was asked to wait, sleep, and come back again after four months with the hope that the next time the lawyer may come up with the case file.
The Supreme Court of India and High Courts on various occasions have strongly observed and emphasized that justice delayed is justice denied. Yet, the courts take years to deliver justice, and as said earlier it has never been just one tier of the court system. We have multiple layers of the courts starting from District courts, followed by High Courts, and then the Supreme Court of India, and almost at every stage the concerned court takes years to adjudicate the cases. Ergo, the case files get bulkier and heavier and the peoples’ expectations and finances keep getting trimmed down with the each passing year.
Hence, there was a strong need to revaluate the entire system to make this mechanism a fast path to access speedier justice because justice delayed is justice denied and there is no other interpretation to this principle.
On the lines to combat long trials and delayed justice and other aspects, the New Laws are introduced. Everyone is now expecting that with these New Laws, the age of litigation will come down, and the litigants will be able to witness the conclusion of their pursuits of justice.
Did we hit the Bulls Eye?
Though it would be slightly early to come to a verdict qua the role of the New Laws in securing speedier justice. However, a bare perusal of the New Laws gives us a fair hint as to whether the cases will keep getting slogged for years and decades, or this a real watershed moment in the Indian legal system.
Section 346 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 deals with speedy justice. The section is quite identical to the erstwhile section 309 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.
The provision though mandates the criminal courts to not allow adjournments as a matter of routine, further the inability of a lawyer to appear because he is assisting some other court is also not a ground to grant adjournment. Lastly, the power is provided to the courts to levy costs on the parties if required.
As stated earlier, the said provision was mentioned earlier too, however, the same was not followed in spirit. The New Laws are recently enacted, thus it’d be slightly early to identify the true implementation of section 346 of the BNSS and other relevant provisions of the law.
Besides a few changes qua speedier justice in the New Laws, there are no apparent steps taken to be seen in pursuit of securing speedier justice. Does it mean that we have ignored the elephant in the room? Or jumped too early?
The time is the only answer amidst the high hopes of the litigants. In addition to the New Laws, the need is to adopt a new approach and consider speedy justice an intrinsic goal of the criminal justice system instead of treating it as a long-forgotten part of the jurisprudence. With the right approach, the New Laws may be able to deliver justice within a reasonable time.
Possible Solutions
It would be a waste of time if we missed the elephant in the room and just skimmed through the aforesaid challenges of the News Laws. There are certainly many ways to trim down the lives of litigation battles and furnish justice to the parties within a reasonable time or at least faster than the current nail speed. Hereinafter is my three-fold suggestion for this centuries-old problem.
1. Hire judges, judges, and more judges
Quite a common suggestion, and nothing new. However, there is no better way to reduce the age of litigation battles than increasing the number of judges. With 100s of cases assigned to a judge on a daily basis, we have been accepting the fact that many cases will only get adjourned as one judge can handle a limited no. of cases. Thus, we are in dire need of more judges, and there is no substitute of hiring more judges as only more judges will be able to tackle lakhs of pending and upcoming cases. Further, with more judges the existing burden on judges will be reduced and they will be able to adjudicate appropriately instead of ending up adjourning many cases daily.
2. No Adjournment means no Adjournment
The second in line is the habit of taking adjournments for many reasons and for no reason at all. Hiring more judges is just a half-baked cake. Without eliminating the habit/ disease of securing adjournments, we can’t move forward.
The courts must follow the no-adjournment policy rigorously, and the lawyers must equally assist the courts in changing this horrendous habit of adjournments. The only exception should be medical exigency and the courts may allow adjournments on medical grounds subject to the submission of medical records.
3. Classification of cases
In various countries, trials are being adjudicated within a fixed time slot – meaning that the courts fix a week or more to adjudicate and hold trials of the targeted cases within that fixed time slot. Further, the remaining cases are being heard without such a fixed blocking process.
However, there is no such classification in the Indian system. Every case is usually heard on a given day, followed by a long next date. Thus, at times the flow of trials gets delayed, and often, the judges, in between, get transferred making room for further delay as the new judge will start from scratch.
The better way could be to classify the cases and adjudicate accordingly with such a time classification process. The courts can select trial cases or other classes of cases, and then put them in a selected time slot of weeks. Resultantly, such cases will be adjudicated within the said time slot instead of rolling for years.
At the same time, during those selected weeks, the courts don’t need to block the entire day, instead, the courts can block just 2-3 hours during the said weeks for the targeted cases, and the rest can be adjudicated at a normal pace. In this manner, the cases that reach the stage of evidence, etc., get into the fix-time zone and the trial can therefore happen quickly and justice can be achieved a lot earlier than the current speed.
Parting Thoughts
There could be many ways to tackle the horrendous issue of a slow legal system, however, with the aforesaid three-fold approach we can target the core and fundamentals of this issue, and make the speedier and easy justice a reality. The idea is to make the system work for speedier justice, and more often than not, simplicity caters to the desired results instead of reinventing the wheel.
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