– An article by Lavanya Goinka
“Justice delayed is justice denied,” you’ve probably heard this phrase before, and it accurately describes India’s current situation. Though difficult to define, justice can be said to vary depending on the situation and individual. Since we currently live in a democratic country like India, where people are ruled by the country’s laws, it is critical to administer justice to victims on time in order to avoid a miscarriage of justice. According to a recent poll in India, there are around 3.2 crore cases outstanding in high and lower courts, implying that justice has no meaning and, if it does exist, it is delivered in a very inefficient manner. However, this does not imply that justice should be rushed and therefore buried; rather, justice should be melted in order to separate on a timely basis, and justice must be done clearly.
However, in today’s society, a victim thinks that the process of justice is moving too slowly. Unfortunately, many are victims of injustice. Even though the majority of Indians are impoverished and illiterate, they manage to travel to court to seek justice by paying their hard-earned money to advocates and law clerks, yet they are unsuccessful. This has been both a blessing and a serious flaw in our Indian judicial system.
And, when we talk about a case where we can easily see how our Indian system fails to punish criminals, the “Nirbhaya case” can be the best example. The incident occurred on December 16, 2012, and it shook the entire country, but justice was only delivered on September 10, 2013, which was a delayed one.
In a country like India, where women are revered and worshipped as gods, rape cases are on the rise, and the ratio is growing by the day. As a result, the justice provided in such cases is also quite slow, and most of the rape victims would have already passed away. The same standard should be applied to such rap cases, where justice should be served as swiftly as possible, taking into account how cruel, violent, and heinous the crime is. Several actions should be made to rethink the judicial system, including increasing the number of fast track courts and computerising the entire country’s legal system, which is the need of the hour.
Judges must set an example for themselves and others by being more punctual and responsible. The Supreme Court of the United States has already taken certain steps, such as implementing E-filing, which allows an advocate or petitioner to submit a case electronically from anywhere in the globe. Justice delayed and denied means that if justice is not delivered promptly, even if it is delivered later, it is not truly justice because there was a period of time when there was no justice.
In simple terms, if justice is delayed for any reason, it is extremely damaging to the people of any society.