Travesty Of Justice

The economic cost of judicial delays is colossal. But the problem is not unsolvable.

- Abraham C. Mathews

In 1963, members of a family – which shall remain unnamed – fighting over property, filed a suit in a trial court in Bombay (as it was then called). The court announced its verdict 25 years later, in 1988. The losing party then moved the Bombay High Court in appeal. As the case was being heard, the court discovered that a number of the parties to the feud had died in the intervening years. If any party dies, the Code of Civil Procedure requires a legal representative to be made a party within 90 days. Since the appellants had failed to do so, the high court dismissed the appeal in 2015. The appeal to the Supreme Court is still pending. Now, if the Supreme Court feels that this procedural oversight can be condoned, the case could well go back to the high court for fresh hearings, 55 years after it was originally filed.

Or take the example of several cases related to bounced cheques, filed in the early 1990s, that finally found resolution in the Supreme Court only last year. Even if the defaulter pays up, as they mostly have to, and is charged 200 per cent penalty to boot, the amount is still paltry, given the inflation of the past three decades. And these are cases filed under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, which was supposed to be a fast-track mechanism for resolution of cheque-bounce cases. It isn’t that justice is not available as much as that with the delays, it becomes almost meaningless.

Scale of the Problem