E-Paper
Guest column | Justice delayed is denied but justice hurried is buried
The need of the hour is better judges to population ratio, better investigation training and long called for police and judicial reforms. There is a pressing need to use technology to integrate all stages of the criminal justice,putting investigation and judicial process online, making the process transparent, time-bound and accountable.
Criminal justice systems across the world abide by the fundamental principle that no innocent person should be punished, although a hundred guilty people may go scot-free.
The root principle here is that a guilty person let off by mistake may be brought to book later, but an innocent person wrongfully punished suffers irreparable loss in terms of years in prison, tarnished reputation, or an innocent life snuffed out. Those wrongfully convicted may lose jobs, be disqualified from holding public office, with them and their families suffering undeserved defamation and social scorn. Thus, the law prefers that if the judiciary is to err, it must err on the side of too long a trial, rather than a quick but wrongful criminal conviction.
Two incidents in news recently, bring this in to context. The first is the enhancement of cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu’s punishment to a one-year jail term for a crime committed in 1988. The former cricketer had punched a man over twice his age, and the legal process began after the man succumbed. Eleven years after the incident, the sessions court acquitted him, and seven years after that the Punjab and Haryana high court convicted him on charges of culpable homicide resulting in a three-year jail sentence. The Supreme Court set aside the decision of the high court 12 years later, and convicted Sidhu for a lesser offence of ‘voluntarily causing hurt.’ Taking cognisance of the fact that 30 years had elapsed, it let Sidhu off with a fine of ₹1,000. The review petition filed in the Supreme Court took three more years, and the court has now sentenced Sidhu to a year of rigorous imprisonment along with the previously imposed fine. Thus, the wheel of justice took 34 years of torturous grind.
The second case is from Hyderabad where on November 27, 2019, a young veterinarian was abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered. Huge public outrage followed the incident, building immense pressure on the state police to bring the culprits to justice. Within nine days, the accused had been arrested and extra-judicially killed in a police encounter on the same road where the body of the victim was found. As per the police, the accused were killed when they snatched police weapons and attempted to flee. After this, there was an outpouring of public sentiment in support of the police and a general endorsement for this ‘short-cut justice’.
The three-member commission of inquiry constituted by the Supreme Court has revealed that the police part had concocted a story. The commission headed by justice VS Sirpur, and comprising justice Rekha P Sonder Baldota and former police officer DR Kaarthikeyan, has recommended that all 10 police officers involved in the encounter should be tried for murder and destruction of evidence.
While 34 years is too long a time for a family to be left waiting and fighting for justice, a shoddy encounter within nine days of any incident cannot be termed as justice either. The criminal justice system in India has lost the confidence of the public at large due to undue delays and unpredictable outcomes. The popular support for methods of ‘instant justice’ via means of police encounters, mob lynching, and vigilantism is also extremely dangerous as is can result in irreversible injustice.
The need of the hour is better judges to population ratio, better investigation training and long called for police and judicial reforms. There is a pressing need to use technology to integrate all stages of the criminal justice,putting investigation and judicial process online, making the process transparent, time-bound and accountable. For those seeking justice, having to choose between hastened miscarriage of justice and painfully long drawn trials spanning decades, where the family of victim has to repeat its tragic story over and over again, are both unfair options. The people of India deserve a better justice delivery ecosystem, in which judges are able to perform optimally and infrastructure is enough to cater to the needs of public.
(The writer is a Chandigarh-based advocate.)
