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Govt must ensure speedy justice
JUDGES HAVE to be expensive if the State wishes its people to get speedy justice. The State must losen its purse strings. Former Chief Justice of India and Chairman, National Human Rights Commission, Justice AS Anand made this observation here today highlighting growing pendency of criminal cases in the country?s courts and the State doing precious little to increase the number of judges and provide other infrastructure.
JUDGES HAVE to be expensive if the State wishes its people to get speedy justice. The State must losen its purse strings. Former Chief Justice of India and Chairman, National Human Rights Commission, Justice AS Anand made this observation here today highlighting growing pendency of criminal cases in the country’s courts and the State doing precious little to increase the number of judges and provide other infrastructure.
He was delivering a lecture on ‘Criminal Justice Delivery System — Need for A Relook’, organised by the Robin Mitra Memorial Society in memory of Rabindranath Mitra, a prominent lawyer, political leader and social activist who passed away on April 1, 2004.
Anand recalled his association with Mitra during the former’s days as law student in Lucknow University 47 years back. He said the entire system of investigation, prosecution and trial required a relook so that victims could get expeditious justice. He said that undertrials who constituted 75 per cent of the total prison population were languishing in jails without cases being decided.
He pointed out that there were nearly 13,000 officers per one billion population — shockingly the lowest judge-population ratio in the world. Same for expenditures on courts: In India, he pointed out, the expenditure on courts was 0.2 per cent of the GNP — again the lowest in the world. In UP it is 4.3 per cent of the GNP.
He said quality of judicial officials at lower level was especially not good and this he attributed to poor work conditions and low remuneration in lower courts.
Police came in for a severe criticism during the lecture. Justice Anand said that most cases he received as NHRC Chairman were against the police who did not lodge FIR and if they did, they did not investigate the case properly. He said general atmosphere in police stations was hostile and indifferent to victims and witnesses alike. He said such an attitude often forced the victims to go for extra-judicial methods to get justice. He, however, admitted to poor work conditions of the police at lower level and extremely low perks available to them and stressed the need for improving the same.
He also advised judges not to function merely as a referee and remain a mute spectator to all the humiliation and plight of victims and witnesses. The judges must have a quest for truth, he added.
