William E. Gladstone said that “Justice delayed, is justice denied” which means if a legal remedy is not provided to the party suffering incorrect time, it is the same as having no remedy at all. This phrase certainly demands a speedy trial because the judicial system is sometimes too slow in resolving legal issues either because of the complexity of the existing system or due to overburdening of work.
The pendency of cases in Indian Judicial is enough that former Supreme Court Judge Markandey Katju said “it is estimated that if no fresh case is filed, it will take about 360 years to clear the backlog “ of the cases filled in the Indian courts. In Upphar Cinema Case, it took 6 years to prove 59 people were died because of the negligence of the Delhi government and Cinema management. Another example is the Nirbhaya case, it takes 7 years to pronounce the judgement of 4 men convicted in 2012 another example is The Ayodhya verdict, which takes 70 years for the court to pronounce the judgement.
Causes of delayed justice:-
• Lack of manpower
In 2016 the Chief Justice of India, Justice T.S. Thakur talks about the burden on the judicial system because of the pendency of cases, He said that Indi needs 70,000 judges to clear the pendency of the cases.
The latest figure from National Judicial Data Grid and Department of Justice data on July 11, 2016, says that there are 16,438 judges at the subordinate court, 621 in the high court, 29 in the Supreme Court all of these are nothing close to the mark of 70,000.
• Complex Judicial system
India has an independent judicial system that is federal in nature. It consists of Supreme Court, High courts and other subordinate courts. Supreme Court is the apex court of the land, as it is the top authority of law and final appellate court. Supreme Court is followed by the High Courts as the top judicial authority in the state, there are 24 high courts in India. Then comes subordinate courts which are controlled and managed under the supervision of High Courts.
The Supreme Court and High Courts are provided with appellate jurisdiction i.e. one can move from subordinate court to high court to Supreme Court if they are not satisfied with the judgement of the court. It is evident that how appeals, trials and retrials consumed a long amount of time because of the complex judiciary system cases takes years to pass and the lives of the victims become miserable because of this never-ending battle.
In Uphaar cinema case, the victim’s parents give the statement that “The only motive of our lives is to get justice for our children to see the culprits punished”.
In J. Jayalalitha v. Union of India., the complaint against Jayalalitha was filed in June 1996 and the verdict was delivered February 2017,20 years after the charge sheet was filled and held her guilty at the time of judgement, she was already dead.
How to improve the efficiency of the Judicial system:-
• By setting Additional dispute Courts so that the workload on apex court can be decreased.
• By simplifying the procedure and spreading awareness about the law.
• By removing unnecessary grounds of adjournment of cases.
• Increasing the number of judges in court
• By making the judicial system transparent
30 million cases are still pending in the courts and it would take around 360 years to clear them. So, its high time essential changes are made in the Indian judiciary system because the life’s of the victims are somewhere stopped in the trial and they are eagerly waiting for their fight to end and the guilty must be punished because justice is a shield that protects a person, not a Sisyphean task which would take years to conclude.
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