Irony of slow justice

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Sanjay Chaturvedi

15 December, 2009

Another tale of delayed justice has popped up the question of the mockery of justice in the country. This time it took 33 years to pronounce Uday Raj with an imprisonment of three months with a fine of Rs 5000.

THE IRONY of delayed justice took 33 years to pronounce Uday Raj with an imprisonment of three months with a fine of Rs 5000. What was his mistake? He was found preparing for a dacoity along with 10 other accomplices. Some more interesting facts are yet to come.

The judgment is pronounced by a fast track court, how fast let’s not discuss. Another jolt, one of the co-accused is still awaiting a final disposal of his trial. Uday Raj is still found to be lucky for having admitted his crime otherwise, it could have taken some more years in the case coming to a decision.

Uday Raj on being pronounced with the judgment appealed to the court for leniency as he is already 65 years old.

The case started on April 18, 1977, when 11 persons were arrested by the police while they were planning for a dacoity. The trial continued for almost 33 years. Uday Raj himself didn't attend court proceedings on three to four occasions and was ultimately issued a non-bailable warrant (NBW).

Lastly, he absconded and was arrested on October 12 this year. Since then, he has been in jail. On November 11, the accused filed an application in the court confessing his guilt.

The above case once again has popped up the question of the mockery of the justice in the country. Is there any relevance of the judgment pronounced after 33 years of committing the crime? Will it make any difference to the person who has been facing trial for the last more than 30 years for the crime he didn’t commit?

Even if he has not attended the trials or has absconded is it worth to waste the precious time of the court and the hard earned money of the tax payers in feeding such criminals in jails only due to slow procedures of our legal system? Even after so much of discussions and explanations, the legal system is going to its worst shapes instead of being improved with the help of latest techniques. With the talk of trials on web conferencing when we think of the cases like Uday Raj, can we think of the advancing the legal systems?

Where courts are busy in attending the appeals of their lower ones, pronouncing the decisions on homosexuality and other such issues far away from the scope of the courts, humanity somewhere is left buried below the bunch of files which no one dares to uncover or we can say do anyone wants to extract these files out unless some political issue is attached to it.