In this article, Krati Bhardwaj of New Law College, Bharti Vidyapeeth, discusses how court cases are a form of harassment to the litigants.

Introduction

“Delayed Justice Prolonged Harassment”

Whenever we hear the word ‘court’, the image of justice and equality form an imprint on our mind. But, one thing that leaves an everlasting impression on our minds is the harassment which we come across from the date of filing till the ultimate disposition of cases. The level of harassment could be understood from the 1984 Sikh riots in which the final decision is still pending and those seeking justice have died after waiting as long as 34 years. The government needs to be efficient in delivering justice to the citizen, after all they are not immortal.

Reasons for such harassment to litigants

1) Delay in delivering justice

Delivering justice is the ultimate aim of our Indian justice system but this seems to be a far-fetched reality due to delay in justice to the aggrieved. The number of legal cases pending is very large in which majority of the cases are minor in nature which does not involve complex technical know-hows. When these minor issues take such a long time then it can be easily deduced, how long the cases of greater concern will take.

There are following reasons leading to delay in delivering justice:

1. A number of formalities: Somewhere between seeking justice and delivering justice, a lot of formalities regarding rules and regulations have to be complied with, which consumes a lot of time of the litigants. The judges have a lackadaisical attitude towards the case proceedings, which is why the judgements are delayed, as the case is dragged on and it lasts longer than it should.

2. Corruption: Before proceeding any further, a lot of formalities have to be fulfilled. The concerned authorities who know the weakness of the aggrieved party try to take an undue advantage. Corruption hinders the process of court hearings and appeals as the person who has been wrongfully detained will have to pay to get a release from such detention. Sometimes the real culprit finds an escape through the court process by easily bribing the officials. In both the cases, the rights of the litigants are violated. Trial magistrate come across a large pool of cases everyday which they are unable to physically attend so sometimes they delegate the task to people who either have no knowledge about it or who finds a way to make money out of it. For instance, if a judge is occupied with some case he may delegate the work to stenographer who may take a bribe just to sign a piece of paper.

3. Slow: Whenever any influential personality is trapped in a lawsuit our judicial system becomes very quick in providing remedy but when it comes to issues related to rape, scams, loss of life and property of general public our system becomes as slow as snail. This raises the question of authenticity in our judicial system. Although a lot of efforts are being made to bring reforms in this area, the pace is still slow. The filing of written statement can cause inordinate delay ranging from six to twenty four months. Delay caused in interlocutory application can range from five months to five years. The multiple number of interlocutory applications filed are dealt by the court properly.

2) Stagnant Laws and Rules

Changes are not made overnight but the stagnant laws and rules are followed blindly for even decades. For a reform to happen, it even takes a life of an innocent or when some incident comes into the limelight and catches the attention of the public.

• In the case of Adultery, there is a dent in the law which says only the man could be charged for adultery and woman are portrayed as a victim. There is a need to modify this law to give equal status to men and women.
• Considerable changes were made in the Juvenile Justice Act after the Nirbhaya gang-rape case which triggered the soul of many people.
• After Kathua rape case, many ordinances are being approved by the Union Cabinet in POCSO Act.

There is a lot of pressure on our judiciary, so everyone is reluctant to new changes. It is difficult to bring transformation not only in laws, rules, and regulations but also in the mindset of the law framers.

3) Agony of undertrials

The prisoners in Indian jail are kept under trial until their case reaches the final judgment. They spend more time in jail than their actual term, if the case would have been decided on time they wouldn’t have to. In the process of defending themselves, they suffer not only in terms of money but they are also harassed in the name of justice. The pain and agony suffered are immeasurable.

4) Backlogs of pending cases

There are 18 judges per 10 lakh people as compared to 50 judges recommended by the Law Commission in its 1987 report which the Chief Justice of India had recently cited seeking an increase in the number of judges. According to the data put out by the Law Ministry in public domain, the judge to population ratio in India stands at 17.86 judges per 10 lakh people. Not only fewer judges and lack of infrastructure has resulted in backlogs but also the dragging of unnecessary cases to the court have led to this situation. For example, cheques and traffic challans, should not be taken to court unless there is some criminal intent because they choke the system in such a way. An alternate dispute mechanism should be set up to resolve this dispute. If a person is making frequent payments of insurance premium then they could opt for Electronic Clearing Service (ECS) which is smarter way than dealing with the bouncing of cheque.

5) Understaffed Judiciary

The number of cases pending is endless and to top that, there is an understaffed judiciary. The numbers are startling: against a perceived requirement of about 50,000 judges, the country has a judicial strength of a mere 18,000, while more than three crore cases are pending in various courts. In the Supreme Court, the current pendency is 60,260 for a Bench consisting of 31 judges. As many as 434 posts of High Court judges are vacant, while a docket burden of 38.68 lakh cases is stretching available infrastructure and resources. Our judiciary is not only understaffed but also equipped with inexperienced judicial officers. These crises are the loopholes in the current system of judiciary.

6) Ignorance among people

If you are not aware of your rights how can you ask remedy for the violation of your rights? Before bringing any case into the notice of the court the aggrieved person usually refer it to their family, friends, relatives or panchayat of that area. When the person finds no solution to their problem then they turn up for legal aid. They have no idea of filing the complaint or registering FIR. Later on, in the name of formalities and law, the litigants are deprived of their rights.

7) Judges Absenteeism

When the litigant reaches on the date given by the judge but finds the judge to be absent then he has no option rather than going back disappointed. This absenteeism is common because of the judges being overburdened by the cases due to which they are not present, which leads to delay in justice. And the repercussions are faced by the litigants.

8) High fees charged by Advocates

These days it has become a common practice by various advocates to charge hefty fees from the clients while the client is still deprived of the justice. The advocate does not reveal the actual status of the case since the client does not have any sort of knowledge about law, the lawyers use certain complex legal terminologies and fool the client and make money out of that.

9) Language of the court

All the judicial proceeding including evidences, in the lower court are recorded in local language of the state. When the judges of the high courts are transferred which also includes judges from outside state. The transferee judge who is not familiar with the local language faces difficulty in dealing with cases which are recorded in vernacular. Translation of such records will not only involve a lot of time and efforts but also hinder the speedy disposal of cases. It applies to litigants also who are unable to understand English which is used in High Court and Supreme Court which poses a problem for litigants. They solely have to depend upon the lawyer for any kind of assistance. This consumes a lot of time and money of the litigant as well as court.

10) Complex process

Every case involves filing application, bail, review and many other procedures which makes one case equivalent to ten cases. There is always a scope for ‘review petition’ and the option of ‘review of review’ is the last resort available, as a last appeal to review petition. Sometimes the judges are not provided with steno/type writers so they have to write the judgment themselves which consumes a lot of time.

Reforms needed to stop such harassment

1) Use of technology

In order to speed up the process of resolving the dispute in courts, our government needs to enhance the technology for efficiency and clarity inside and outside courtrooms. These technologies should be available to everyone, even the non-lawyers i.e people who have interest in such case. Since it takes a long time in the disposal of any case and they involve a lot of formalities. The documents which are required for a particular case and the further steps involved should be available at a click.

2) Adjudicating mechanism

Since our judiciary is overburdened with cases so there is a need to set up another adjudicating mechanism by the name of Tribunal, Commission, ADR, or known by some other name. This will help in distributing the workload of courts to other adjudicatory bodies. There are matters which can be solved with the help of arbitration more speedily than going through unending court proceedings. The transparency in the working of the courts will increase with the reduced workload.

3) Restructuring the system

There is a need to restructure the system by simplifying various complicated procedures, for instance, that of appointment and removal of judges. Judges of Supreme/High Court can be removed only through the process of impeachment. The judge must be guilty of ‘misbehaviour or incapacity’ by both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha. The rules of impeachment are most tortuous.

4) Litigants need to be more vigilant

Instead of completely depending on the lawyers the litigants should become more vigilant towards their rights. Most of the people are unaware of their rights so they completely rely on the guidance of the lawyers. Blaming lawyers for the irresponsible behaviour would not bring the justice to the litigant. Sometimes it’s the negligence of the litigant himself which causes such harassment.

5) Adjudication must be made affordable

Article 39A, of Indian Constitution, provides equal justice and free legal aid. This article promotes the objective of legal aid to the needy litigants and helps in securing the justice. The process of courts are not only time consuming but also money consuming. Access to justice should not run in the name of money.

Information Technology: A new horizon to the judiciary

Judges, lawyers, clerks, and court administrators are the eminent people in the process of delivering justice and are generally well educated. Our education system keeps evolving over time and in this era of rat race we need legal administrators to be equipped with “legal tech”. Technology has a huge role to play in every sphere and no doubt the presence of technology in law will enhance the justice delivery process and make it more efficient. Our legal administrators are quite reluctant to learn about computer technology. Once they are acquainted with the technology they will find it smooth to handle the work. The use of technology will optimize the work and help in saving the time and money of not only the litigants but also that of judges and lawyers.

IT will also help in the following areas :

1. Recording court proceedings
2. Storage of data for the administrative purpose
3. Easy retrieval of information
4. Easy access to law
5. Cases can be managed easily
6. Transparency in the system

E-court Initiative

Many judicial officers, senior officers from DoJ, NIC and central project coordinator who were connected with the e-court project participated in the conference held in New Delhi on 2nd and 3rd December, by the e-committee of the Supreme Court of India in association with the Department of Justice (DoJ) of the Government of India. The project was undertaken for the development of district and subordinate courts of the country. The major objective of e-courts Mission, Mode Project (Phase I 2010-15; Phase II 2015-19) is to make judicial system equipped with ICT by providing

• modern hardware and connectivity
• Facility of video conferencing (VC) and recording of witness through Video Conferencing
• E-payment, electronic filing and use of other citizen-centric facilities
• automation of work process in all courts
• electronic movement of records from taluka/trial to appeal courts

India’s first e-court was established in Hyderabad High Court which uses digitized case records and reduce the use of paper considerably. The presiding judge gets an electronic case list to make digital notings on a computer.

Efforts to be applauded

• The mobile application (e-courts services) launched was not only helpful to the advocates, institution, organizations but common litigants have also availed the benefit of the app. This app can be easily downloaded from the Google play store or from the link given here.

• With the help of Automated Mailing Service, the development of all the cases relating to a particular litigant and lawyer can be communicated with the single mail. Mails are being sent to the registered email id of the litigant and lawyer regarding the case status, filing registration scrutiny, next dates, cause list services.
• SMS push service which has been made operational is more used by people in remote areas where there is lack of internet facilities. In order to know the case status, a person can send CNR no. to 9766899899.
• Lately, Madras High Court introduced the e-court fee payment facility thus becoming first in south India and eighth in the country to introduce such facility.
• The first “Women’s Court” was launched in Bengal to address the atrocities faced by women. By providing a safe environment to resolve the grievances of the women, the issues related to women’s marital affair, family problems, female trafficking and other such issues are tackled by the court.

NGOs Offering Legal Aid

Conclusion

The much-abused rights of the litigants need to be reviewed so that the harassment caused to them can be reduced and there can be speedy redressal of their problems. Special courts and an expert committee should be set up to address the problem faced by the litigants. The problems faced are unending with the rapid change in the society. Governments should come up with latest ideas and initiatives as the justice coming after decades have no meaning left to it.

References

• http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/A-desperate-situation/article14257231.ece
• http://www.legalserviceindia.com/article/l416-Back-log-of-cases.html
• http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=174192
• http://ecourts.gov.in/rajnandgaon/e-court-project
• http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/hc-introduces-e-court-fee-payment/article23622069.ece
• http://www.ide.go.jp/library/English/Publish/Download/Als/pdf/16.pdf