Reforming Criminal Judicial System as a whole needed than one Lok Pal.

Reforming Criminal Judicial System as a whole needed than one Lok Pal.  

I had to attend a civil case in Bangalore City Civil courts recently and I saw that the special court constituted for prosecution of Jayalalitha is still there working. If this is the state of affairs in a state like Karnataka, one can imagine the condition in states like UP. Further all the years taken for prosecution of political leaders is creating a situation wherein public thinks that all political leaders are criminals. This kind of perception is very bad for democracy. When we can effectively prosecute and convict all criminals be it politicos, be it corporate big wigs, be it Mafia leaders, bandits and jholawala and media traitors in a reasonable time then there will be freedom from criminalization of the politics and corruption. With Lok Pal we are only creating one more office without addressing the serious issues relating to the criminal justice system. Unless these basic issues are addressed the issue of criminal activities of politicos will not be effectively solve.  Cure therefore needed to the malady which is failure of criminal justice in India and not to a symptom like criminalization or corruption in political system. I agree that corruption do need specific steps. But it should be done in a all round effort to root out crime and not as a isolated condition.

Whenever some serious offence takes place, our politicians and so called intellectuals. Say “Law will take its own course” as if it is some uncontrollable chemical reaction.  Being associated with Legal profession for about 2 decades I say that the present state of affairs in Judiciary are no different from executive or legislature and the statements like law taking its own course is a gross misrepresentation of the actual situation. Few agree but will not actually realize how bad this situation is. I my self followed up a criminal case under CBI investigation since 1986.

In many states it takes decades for a criminal court to hear a case. There are no judges and courts in the required number in subordinate courts in the first place. Therefore the main problem for the “law to take its own course is the shortage of judges in the subordinate judiciary. 90% of the litigation is managed by Subordinate courts and you will be surprised to know that the total number of judges in our country is around 14,000. As per the Law commission’s report this number should be increase by 5 times. No action is taken on that till date. To be fair with Union Government they did try to bring a proposal for Indian Judicial Service, but there is no consent on the same from various states.

Unfortunately by Subordinate courts come under the State list and most of the states don’t give a damn about these courts. With the kind of political leadership we are having in various states it is difficult to expect improvements in near future. The proposal to create All India Judicial Service is mainly stalled because of the opposition from the states. Should the present structure of the subordinate courts which has not kept pace with the national requirements, mainly due to indifferent and negligent attitude of the states, to be allow to continue? I think not.  A national level judicial cadre with proper recruitment procedure like civil services and year after year recruitment filling all the vacancies will serve the nation well. In case of need there can be constitutional amendment for this purpose. Even otherwise there are Accident Tribunals, Banking tribunals, CBI courts etc can always be staffed with AIJS officials. This will reduce the work on regular courts and will give more time for them to hear criminal and civil matters. Further I am very much sure that the Supreme Court or High Courts will support any sincere effort by the Union Government to recruit and staff courts with well qualified people in a transparent and proper manner.  In fact Supreme Court time and again rooted for it.

Few years back I read that the total FIR’s filed in India in a year is about 6 Lacs. With 12000 Judges working in full time I think we can deal with these cases at trail stage and also hear appeals at the first level with in 3 months of filing a charge sheet.   If we need to spend about 25 Lacs (actual amount will be much less than this) per court per year towards all the staff salaries and other establishment expenses we can have some 12,000 criminal courts exclusively for a cost of Rs. 3000 Cr per year.  Most of the cost can be recovered from fines also. So the cost is virtually nothing. Even if infrastructure is to be created it will not cost a one time amount of say Rs. 12,000 Cr.

Very few will appreciate the effect such fast delivery of justice will have on the society. Many of the criminals have multiple offenses pending against them. Once we put a system on place wherein fast trial and punishment is given and once they go to jail in no time the charm of criminal life will be substantially reduced and the confidence of the public in the judicial process will also increase. With criminals being in Jail there will be less scope for criminalization of the politics. Further during faster trial also ensure that crimes are in public memory and therefore pressure will be there on the police etc to conduct the case for prosecution properly. Once it is clear people called as witnesses are also not required run behind courts for years and when there is hardly any time to manipulate or threaten witnesses common people also will be more willing to come forward as witnesses etc and help the prosecution.

One important provision in criminal law which needed to be urgently deleted relates to suspension of sentence. There is provision in Criminal Procedure Code wherein a sentence passed can be suspended during appeals time. During the period of suspension the convicted is free to wander in the streets.

Most of the criminals make use of this provision and get their sentence suspended. In the appellate court they drag the appeals for years while roaming freely outside. There is no fear of initial conviction and no fear till the final appeal is decided by Supreme Court which may take decades and persons will die by that time due to old age. So what is the use of giving conviction if you can not make the convicted under go sentencing? The best example of this situation is that of this traitor Binayak Sen. He is convicted by the Trial court for sedition and now came out without getting the conviction overturned because his sentencing is suspended.  No one could have found fault with the system if the High Court or Supreme Court finds that there is not much evidence against him and release him. But to suspend sentence of such person is quite wrong. I do not know how Supreme Court in its wisdom did this.

Other legal reform needed to be done is the removal of provision for concurrent serving of sentences. At present if a person is sentenced for 5 years to one offence and say 3 years for another, normally courts order him to under go both the sentences concurrently and as a result he will only serve 5 years in prison. We need to remove this provision so that such persons will serve 8 years that is first 5 years term and them a 3 years term. Similarly limiting life sentence for 14 years is also should done away with and made a long time like 30 Years or ideally remainder of their convicted persons natural life without any chance for remission etc. With this, courts will find it much harder to award death sentence.  

In the administrative level is the limitation on the cases listed every day and also the cases in active list before any single judge.  At present many judges get some 100 plus cases listed before them every day. Lot of time of the court is wasted due to the same simply in adjourning the cases. Further it is also causing lot of inconvenience to advocate, public, police etc.   Instead of that if every day is divided into morning and afternoon sessions and only 3, 4 cases are listed in a session lot of time will be saved and lot of convenience will be there to public at large.

Lastly capability levels of the people who are taking up the legal profession are pathetic. It good that Bar Association has now started a separate Bar exam. In fact we seriously need an exam in the mode of CA, ICWA or CS to improve the standard. Without increasing the knowledge and capability levels of the legal professionals there can not be any reforms.