Shashwat Mishra, Mumbai Uncensored, 28th December 2021:
It will take 30 years to complete the trial of all the cases registered till last year, this is the state of pendency of cases before the courts as well as the police. These are the findings of the white paper released by Praja Foundation a non-partisan organization working towards enabling accountable governance since 1997 based out of Mumbai, Maharashtra. According to the report, around 2550 serious offenses are disposed of by the courts every year, if we take an average of the cases disposed then it would take 30 years to complete the trial. The report states that a total of 6,329 were disposed of by various courts till last year i.e. 2020, of which, only 3,414 cases lead to a conviction.
Meanwhile, Mumbai police have registered a total of 50,158 cases throughout the year, if we add up the pendency of the previous year’s cases then by the end of 2020 the number goes to 1,26,921. Out of these the police filed a charge sheet in 21,420 cases and has submitted a final report in 9,437 cases. If we talk specifically about crime against women (CAW) the situation is very grim. In 2020 a total of 25,263 CAW were at different stages of the trial, the backlog of pending cases from the previous year was 22,368. Out of these cases, 121 cases got conviction, while in 329 cases the accused were acquitted. The police registered 4,583 new FIRs in CAW cases, this is in addition to the figure of 10,527 that were already being investigated. The irony here is that the POCSO Act was introduced, it was mandated that the trial in POCSO cases should be complete within a year of the happening of the offense. Another plight is of the undertrial prisoners, according to the report, 297 POCSO cases are under trial for more than three years, while 2,446 are being tried for the last 1-3 years. Looking at the state of our justice dispensation system the situation will take time to improve
