The number of police-courts should be increased for speedy justice

- Police and Judiciary in India both work like Rajshaya Gada, so justice is not served. In these circumstances, the initiative taken by the Yogi government to provide speedy justice to the people is good, but due to this, there is no hope for speedy justice. In India every scheme looks good on paper but its implementation is difficult. The reason is that, except for the small states where crime is low, the rest of the states do not have enough police staff and also do not have enough courts.

As the backlog of cases in courts has become a serious problem in India, the Yogi Adityanath government of Uttar Pradesh has taken an initiative. The Yogi government has launched a drive to dispose of cases expeditiously under 'Operation Conviction'. Currently in UP, cases of sexual harassment including rape of minors are completed within 30 days. Under 'Operation Conviction', the Uttar Pradesh police will dispose of at least 20 cases of serious crimes like rape, murder, assault, conversion, cow-slaughter in every district in addition to smallpox cases in a single month.

As soon as such an incident takes place in any district of UP, the entire process from filing the charge sheet to convicting or acquitting the accused will be completed within 30 days. Under 'Operation Conviction', the charge sheet will be filed in the court within three days of the commission of the crime and the case will be completed within the next 27 days to ensure speedy justice. Even if the police files a charge sheet and completes the investigation quickly, it depends on the court whether the case will proceed quickly or not.

The police chiefs of each district have also been directed to request daily hearing of serious cases in coordination with the district judges in their respective districts so as not to delay the courts. Apart from this, the police chief has also been asked to coordinate with the system including the forensic science laboratory so that the report is received quickly.

Generally, rules are made and placed in the government system and circulars are also sent through the government, but they are not bothered whether these rules are strictly followed or not. The Yogi government has also ordered the creation of a special cell in the office of the police commissioner of every city or district police chief.

This cell will monitor whether everything is done on time in the cases fixed for speedy disposal in each district and will also send a report to Lucknow. A website will also be created on which the details of what happened in which case will be updated every week. Home Ministry officials and police chiefs will be able to know the status of each case with the help of the website.

In India, both the police and the judiciary work like a wagon, so there is no justice. In these circumstances, the initiative taken by the Yogi government to provide speedy justice to the people is good, but due to this, there is no hope for speedy justice. The reason is that in India every scheme looks good on paper but its implementation is difficult. The reason is that, except for the small states where crime is low, the rest of the states do not have enough police staff and also do not have enough courts.

In order to get speedy justice in any case, it is necessary to investigate the case quickly. If the police are not enough, where can the investigation be done quickly? Even the police are not only tasked with investigating crimes, rather investigation is the last priority of the police. The police have to perform various tasks including security of politicians, serving people in power and their families, their personal affairs, maintenance of law and order, election duty. If the police gets freed from all these, should they investigate the cases?

Courts are in the same situation as the police. India has more population and less courts. Even in the courts there are a large number of cases which are called very small and frivolous. Out of the cases that we have in the courts there, lakhs of cases are political. There are a large number of cases where people have demonstrated against the government, protested, violated prohibitory orders. In these cases, due to political pressure, the police do not investigate quickly and the case does not go ahead, but the time of the court keeps getting worse. There are also political pressures to speed up some cases. Due to all these reasons serious cases are not tried even in courts.

Yogi government or any other government should change this situation. Meaning, the number of both police and courts has to be massively increased. For that, money is needed and governments are not ready to allocate money. Apart from this, the police should be freed from all other duties and should only focus on crime prevention or investigation. It is not going to happen with any government.

Political calculations are always behind any decision taken by politicians. There are political calculations behind this decision of the Yogi government as it has put the crimes of conversion and cow slaughter in the category of serious crimes like rape and murder. It is clear that this has been done to please the Hindu vote bank and create a strong campaign point in the future.

100 fast track courts had to be closed due to lack of funds

According to the statistics provided by the Government of India, by the end of March 2023, there are 773 fast track courts in India to try cases of sexual harassment including rape, of which 415 fast track courts are to try cases related to Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses (POCSO). Cases of rape or sexual exploitation of minors are registered under POCSO. More than 1.56 lakh pending cases have been disposed of by these fast track courts of the country. Good work has been done by fast track courts but considering the backlog of cases in India there is a need for more fast track courts. At present there are fast track courts for sexual crimes and if fast track courts are also made for economic crimes by increasing the coverage, the court cases will be disposed of quickly.

According to an estimate, there is a need for at least 3 thousand fast track courts in India, but the government does not provide enough funds to the existing fast track courts, so there is no possibility of new fast track courts. Due to non-payment of money from the government, the Supreme Court had to allow the closure of around 100 fast track courts.

An average of two thousand cases before a Supreme Court judge

India's population has crossed 140 crores, so crimes are increasing but there is no commensurate investigation and judicial infrastructure. This means that there are not enough police or agencies to investigate the cases quickly and there are not enough courts to try the cases so the courts are piled up with cases.

There are currently around 5 crore cases pending in different courts in India. About 4.40 crore cases are pending in the lower courts while 60 lakh cases are pending in 25 high courts of the country. More than 70 thousand cases are pending in the Supreme Court.

There are currently 34 sanctioned seats in the Supreme Court, including the Chief Justice. If we look at the caseload of the Supreme Court, there were two thousand cases per judge. When can one judge of the Supreme Court dispose of two thousand cases? The Supreme Court also has cases including constitutional interpretation which has a three-judge, five-judge or seven-judge constitution bench. Months pass in these cases.

The Chief Justice of the country has repeatedly complained about the inadequate judicial infrastructure. There have been public outcries but it doesn't matter.