NEW DELHI: About three-fourths of the totalprisoners in India are undertrials, says a new report by National Social Watch, a network of civil society organizations.
"According to a note circulated by the law ministry in 2010, there are over three lakh undertrial prisoners in jails across the country. About two lakh of them are imprisoned for several years primarily because of delays in the justice delivery system. In some cases, prisoners have been behind bars for more than the maximum term of imprisonment for offences they had been charged with," says the overview document of the 2013 report released on Tuesday.
The report said such a state of affairs was a consequence of high pendency of cases in the courts. It also noted that while Mumbai had 1.41 lakh pending trial cases in December 2010, another 20,725 were added the next year. In 2011, 12,296 cases were disposed of. Tellingly, only 2,082 (17%) resulted in convictions.
Four high courts — Allahabad, Madras, Calcutta and Bombay — alone account for 50% of the total pending cases, according to the report. The states of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Gujarat together have about half of the total pending cases. The total number of pending cases, the report observed, had risen from 2.81 crore in 2004 to 3.17 crore in 2011.
"On an average three people were placed in the space earmarked for two prisoners. In a way this is another form of human rights violation," says the report's overview document.
Executive director of the National Foundation for India Amitabh Behar, who is one of the editors of the report, says that the clogging of cases could be partly taken care of locally, with measures such as the Gram Nyayalayas Act of 2008 which was meant to provide local courts to the rural population. However, it never took off. "It was a very ambitious scheme for creating new mechanisms for dispensing justice locally. Because of an absence of such bodies at the local level, clogging continues in other courts," says Behar.
The report also sought to correlate pendency of cases and the state of under trials in prison to the strength of judges in courts not keeping up with the rising number of vacancies. While the strength of judges in district and subordinate courts increased from 14,412 in January 2006 to 18,123 in September 2011, the proportion of vacancies in the same period increased from 19% to 21%.
Meanwhile in the high courts, the sanctioned strength of judges increased from 726 in April 2006 to 895 in January 2012. The proportion of vacancies in the same period increased from 21% to 31%. A similar trend was observed in the Supreme Court where the strength of judges increased from 26 in April 2006 to 31 in the same period. However, vacancies doubled from two to four in those six years.
Legal scholar and lawyer advocate Geeta Ramaseshan of the Madras high court says that the size of the judiciary has not kept up with the rising population. "Litigations under the civil laws are extraordinarily delayed, and the system is severely failing. Because of this, people are turning towards criminal laws, where the process itself is a punishment," she adds.
Original NEWS Source:- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/About-75-of-total-prisoners-in-India-are-undertrials-Report/articleshow/27739400.cms
"According to a note circulated by the law ministry in 2010, there are over three lakh undertrial prisoners in jails across the country. About two lakh of them are imprisoned for several years primarily because of delays in the justice delivery system. In some cases, prisoners have been behind bars for more than the maximum term of imprisonment for offences they had been charged with," says the overview document of the 2013 report released on Tuesday.
The report said such a state of affairs was a consequence of high pendency of cases in the courts. It also noted that while Mumbai had 1.41 lakh pending trial cases in December 2010, another 20,725 were added the next year. In 2011, 12,296 cases were disposed of. Tellingly, only 2,082 (17%) resulted in convictions.
Four high courts — Allahabad, Madras, Calcutta and Bombay — alone account for 50% of the total pending cases, according to the report. The states of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Gujarat together have about half of the total pending cases. The total number of pending cases, the report observed, had risen from 2.81 crore in 2004 to 3.17 crore in 2011.
"On an average three people were placed in the space earmarked for two prisoners. In a way this is another form of human rights violation," says the report's overview document.
Executive director of the National Foundation for India Amitabh Behar, who is one of the editors of the report, says that the clogging of cases could be partly taken care of locally, with measures such as the Gram Nyayalayas Act of 2008 which was meant to provide local courts to the rural population. However, it never took off. "It was a very ambitious scheme for creating new mechanisms for dispensing justice locally. Because of an absence of such bodies at the local level, clogging continues in other courts," says Behar.
The report also sought to correlate pendency of cases and the state of under trials in prison to the strength of judges in courts not keeping up with the rising number of vacancies. While the strength of judges in district and subordinate courts increased from 14,412 in January 2006 to 18,123 in September 2011, the proportion of vacancies in the same period increased from 19% to 21%.
Meanwhile in the high courts, the sanctioned strength of judges increased from 726 in April 2006 to 895 in January 2012. The proportion of vacancies in the same period increased from 21% to 31%. A similar trend was observed in the Supreme Court where the strength of judges increased from 26 in April 2006 to 31 in the same period. However, vacancies doubled from two to four in those six years.
Legal scholar and lawyer advocate Geeta Ramaseshan of the Madras high court says that the size of the judiciary has not kept up with the rising population. "Litigations under the civil laws are extraordinarily delayed, and the system is severely failing. Because of this, people are turning towards criminal laws, where the process itself is a punishment," she adds.
Original NEWS Source:- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/About-75-of-total-prisoners-in-India-are-undertrials-Report/articleshow/27739400.cms
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