Justice denied is Justice delayed. Discuss the pendency problem of the Indian criminal investigation system in the light of the NCRB report.

Lack of timely justice delivery adversely affects the socio-economic environment. The National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) report provides insights into delays in justice delivery.

Where is justice delayed?

• Every year the NCRB report has collected data on the pendency of cases with police and in courts. But this was largely about the number of such cases. In the latest NCRB  has also recorded the period of pendency.
• There was a delay in filing of charge sheets by police in 40% of cases.
• The police are required to file a charge sheet within 90 days for IPC crimes. But in certain cases such as rioting, which includes communal riots, police delayed the filing of charge sheets in 60% of the cases.
• There are more than 3 lakh cases pending investigations for more than one year.
• As a whole, 2,71,779 cases were pending trial at the end of 2017.

Fast Track Courts

• In more than 40% of cases with fast-track courts, the time taken was more than three years to finish the trial.
• In as many as 3,384 cases committed to fast-track courts, the trial was finished in more than 10 years.
• Over 4,500 cases of the 38,000-odd cases that fast-track courts completed in 2017 were running for 5-10 years.
• The trial was completed within one year in around 11,500 cases only.

These data show that the structural problems of the Indian criminal investigation system must be addressed or else the fast courts would be of no much help.

Topics: GS-II: Important Aspects of Governance Transparency and Accountability Citizen Charters