Merlyn law firm - Blog 4

1. Merlyn law firm Blog

2. Remedies Available To The Complainant And Victim For Speeding Up The Process Of Criminal Investigation And Trial INTRODUCTION: The criminal justice system is composed of three primary and discernible components: police, courts, and prisons. The components of the criminal justice system are seen as interrelated, interdependent, and striving to achieve a unified goal. In our criminal jurisprudence, an accused is presumed to be innocent till proven guilty, the burden of proof being on the prosecution; he is entitled to a true investigation, and fair and open trial, and the prosecution is enjoined to play a balanced role in the trial of an offence. The standard of proof required is ‘proof beyond reasonable doubt’.

3. Article 21 of our Constitution guarantees protection of life and personal liberty and enjoins that no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law. Through judicial interpretation, this fundamental right has been elaborated and expanded tremendously. The ‘procedure’ prescribed by law has to be ‘reasonable, fair and just’. A right to early end of criminal proceedings through a speedy trial is a part of right to life.

4. NEED TO SPEED UP CRIMINAL TRIALS IN INDIA: The reason one goes to court is to get justice, and “Justice Delayed is Justice Denied” Unfortunately the judicial system in India is based on Evidences and facts not conscience or morals, so it should be easier, once having the facts at hand, all it needs is argument and hearing and quicker pronouncement of Justice. A judicial system that cares only about evidences and facts shouldn’t worry about taming the souls of the plaintiff and the defendant with time rather give justice as quick as it can, this delay/denial of justice leads to increasing “Out of Court settlements” which are cheaper and quicker thereby leading to the loss of trust in our Judicial System.

5. This has been explicitly made so in the Article 39-A of the Constitution that directs the State – to secure equal justice and free legal aid for the citizens. But the experiences of last 57 years show that the State has failed squarely on addressing some very basic issues–quick and inexpensive justice and protecting the rights of poor and the vulnerable. The justice delivery system is on the verge of collapse with more than 30 million cases clogging the system. There are cases that take so much of time that even a generation is too short to get any type of redressal. It will take about 300 years to clear the backlog of cases in Indian courts is proof enough that our criminal justice system is sick, stagnant and in urgent need of a complete overhaul.

6. FINDINGS OF MALIMATH COMMITTEE: Over 13 years ago, a committee headed by Justice VS Malimath that examined the criminal justice system made wide ranging recommendations to deal with enormous delays, particularly in trial courts. It noted that the number of cases which are tried summarily is quite small as maximum punishment that can be given after a summary trial is three months.

7. To speed up the process, the committee said all cases in which punishment is three years and below should be tried summarily and punishment that can be awarded in summary trials should be increased to three years. At present only specially empowered magistrate can exercise summary powers which the Committee said should be given to all Judicial Magistrates First Class. The Indian Penal Code prescribes the procedure for dealing with ‘petty offences’, and restricts it to those offences punishable only with fine not exceeding Rs 1000. A district judge can specify in the summons the fine which the accused should pay if he pleads guilty. This procedure is simple and convenient to the accused, as he need not engage a lawyer nor appear before the court if he is not interested in contesting the case. To give benefit of this provision to large number of accused, the committee favoured increasing the amount.

8. The Malimath Committee made observations regarding the Court vacations. The committee went on to suggest that the Supreme Court and high courts should reduce the period of vacation and increase the working days of the apex court to 206 days and the high courts to 231 days. The Supreme Court has just 193 working days a year for its judicial functioning, the High Courts function for 210 days and trial courts for 245 days. Another observation made by the committee is that the advocates often take adjournments. Frequent adjournments are one of the main reasons for delays in criminal cases. Though amendment were made requiring that the proceedings in a criminal case should be held as expeditiously as possible and on a day-to-day basis, it is still unclear whether it has been effective in bringing down litigation time.

9. TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT AIDING IN SPEEDING UP CRIMINAL TRIALS: With the advent of technology, and the global pandemic technology could essentially be boon to speed up the cases piled up before the Courts. However, it is essential to have compulsory 24 hours electricity supply to each judicial building that is Court. It is pertinent for the judges as well as the Court employees to be given free laptops and internet connection for them to facilitate the conduction of trials through an online platform. The quality of data is circumspect and is non-uniform between courts, which use different abbreviations, categorisation, and formats which make comparing data between courts an arduous and costly process. Significant progress has been made towards computerisation of courts. However, computerisation must include within its ambit the standardisation of data collection across courts and not merely computerisation within silos. New technology should be leveraged, and not just technology for data collection. Artificial Intelligence is fast maturing and with further advances in machine learning, standardised data collection can assist judges in forming judgements.

10. An e Courts initiative has been at work since 2005 and to cover nearly 15,000 courts in India. In the case of e-court, everything is done in an “online environment” through the use of Internet and other Information and Communication Technology (ICT), whereas a computerised court is nothing more than a court having computers and basic level hardware and software. The e- courts project is about providing ICT so as to enable courts to make justice delivery system affordable and cost-effective. This would be beneficial for both improving the court processes and rendering citizen-centric services. E-courts are aimed to make legal processes easier and more user friendly. In an e-court, the entire work is executed digitally, wherein, the information that is shared and generated is stored as a database and synched to a particular software. Given the global pandemic, where court hearing is held using online tools such as Zoom and the plaintiff lawyers, the defendant lawyers, the judges hearing the case, and the court officials are present online. On an event that such e Courts had started earlier, the saving of time would be enormous as they could provide evidence from wherever they are physically located and do not have to travel long distances and wait endlessly for cases to be called.

11. CONCLUSION: We can conclude from the above discussion that “Justice delayed is Justice denied” so the justice giving system should be stronger and the speed of trail should be increased by bringing certain changes in the criminal justice system. Moreover, there is a need to clear the backlog of pending cases. Still, the untiring efforts put by fear and flavourless Indian Judiciary is doing commendable job of imparting justice in spite of so many difficulties, which created faith of public. The high pendency in courts can decline only with effective measurement, process overhaul, constant feedback, and by equipping the judiciary with technology and modern tools. This alone can enable the emergence of a new and modern judicial system with the capacity to dispense justice speedily.

12. To address the remedy of e-Courts, it is critical to draw up a well-defined and pre-decided framework as it can help in laying a concrete roadmap and direction to the e-courts scheme of India. Another solution to address e-court related challenges would be to upgrade the present state of infrastructure. The present judicial infrastructure does not support establishing the e- court project. The government needs to identify and develop the infrastructure that would be required to support the e-court project. The government must also make dedicated efforts in the training of personnel to maintain all the e-data. These include maintaining proper records of e-file minute entries, notification, service, summons, etc. for ready references. Also, conducting training sessions to familiarise the Judges with the e-courts framework and procedure can give a huge impetus to the successful running of e-courts. Establishing e-courts can bring transparency and accountability in the judicial system as they can bring a lot more judicial reforms in India while helping in dealing with the long pending cases. E-courts will prove to be a major step in the evolution of India’s legal framework and will play a major role in boosting the confidence of domestic and foreign businesses as they explore investments in India.

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