By Krishna N. Das, Saurabh Sharma, Subrata Nag Choudhury and Arpan Chaturvedi
NEW DELHI/AJMER/KOLKATA (Reuters) – The Indian government has scaled back its goal of creating thousands of new courts to quickly try sexual crimes after states like West Bengal, where the recent brutal rape-murder of a doctor shook the nation, fell far away. targets are missing, according to three federal government officials and an internal document seen by Reuters.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government moved to set up fast-track special courts (FTSC) in 2019 to exclusively try sexual crimes, after the Supreme Court that year criticized state governments for being slow in delivering justice. to the victims. The court singled out Bengal and Uttar Pradesh for taking too long to reach a ruling on cases involving child victims.
Most sexual crimes are tried by India’s state courts, which have a heavy workload, but the Modi government planned to incentivize state governments to establish 1,023 FTSCs by March 2021 by funding 60% of the cases. costs. Each FTSC has one judicial officer and seven members of support staff.
The government had projected 2,600 FTSCs by 2026, but has now revised its target to 790 due to low interest from states and a lack of judges, according to officials and the document, an undated summary this year of the FTSC project’s progress.
As of August, only 752 FTSCs had been established nationwide, according to publicly available government data.
Some states were slow to join the project, with Bengal joining only last year. The opposition-led state, whose Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is under scrutiny for her handling of sexual crimes, had earlier set a target of 123 fast-track courts by March 2021, according to officials and the document.
But only six courts are functioning in Bengal, where some 48,600 cases of rape and other sexual crimes are pending sentencing.
Details of the federal government’s original target and its decision to sharply reduce it are reported for the first time by Reuters.
West Bengal’s top judicial bureaucrat, Siddhartha Kanjilal, attributed the slow response to a lack of judges, but said authorities were working with the Calcutta High Court, its highest court, to appoint retired officials to the FTSCs.
“There have been delays,” he said. “We, as well as the Calcutta High Court, are in charge of the matter.”
India’s Ministry of Law and Justice and the office of Banerjee, an outspoken critic of Modi, did not respond to requests for comment.
Bengal has been set a target of having 17 special courts by 2026, according to the undated government document and a second August 30 summary of the status of FTSCs in that eastern state seen by Reuters.
India’s strained judicial system has a backlog of tens of millions of cases. State trial courts are short about 5,000 judicial officers, about 20% of the judges assigned to them by state authorities, government data show.
In a notable case of delay, in August this year a district court in Ajmer sentenced six men to life imprisonment for their involvement in mass rapes that occurred in the early 1990s.
One of the Ajmer victims, who cannot be named under Indian law, said she was abandoned by her husband after learning of the assault and that a traditional court ruling came too late for her: “I am now of the age of a grandmother. and I have no expectations or hopes.
In contrast, FTSCs focus on specific crimes and can prosecute them quickly. They are also allowed to hire judges on a contract basis, including retired judicial officers.
In 2022, the last year for which complete data is available, the FTSC ruled on 83% of the cases included in the file. By contrast, Indian courts overall ruled on only 56% of sexual crime cases heard that year.
The original targets of the FTSC were set by the Federal Ministry of Justice and Law using a formula that took into account the number of pending cases in each state and the target for each court to conclude 165 cases annually, one of the officials said. Like his colleagues, the official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
In a country where cases can drag on, FTSCs “have special relevance in cases involving vulnerable victims and witnesses,” said GS Bajpai, vice-chancellor of the National Law University of Delhi, who has advised the government on criminal law reforms. .
Senior advocate Shobha Gupta, who has represented many rape victims, said the FTSCs can be helpful, but appeals still go through the slow traditional court system.
“What is needed is a quick follow-up to the final court and the final verdict and execution of the final verdict within a strict deadline,” he said.
There is no publicly available data on how many FTSC cases are appealed, but two of the government officials said it was common for rulings from lower courts and tribunals to be appealed. Nearly 42% of the 1.7 million criminal cases pending in India’s high courts are appeals.
BLAME GAME?
Opposition-led states have generally been slower to establish FTSC, according to government data.
Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, both governed by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, have met their targets, according to the three officials and data from the Justice Department.
But the western state of Maharashtra, governed by a coalition that includes the BJP, has only set 14 of its 138 targets.
The three officials said the federal government had repeatedly urged lagging states like Bengal to join but often received no response.
The Aug. 30 summary seen by Reuters said the justice department had written to Bengal on Dec. 12, 2023, advising it to hire contractual staff “in case there is not a sufficient workforce.”
In 2021, then law minister Kiren Rijiju also wrote a letter to Banerjee, seen by Reuters, in which he said his department had sent prior reminders seeking her consent to set up FTSC.
The three officials said they received no response to the letters.
One opposition-ruled state that has met its target of 22 FTSC is Jharkhand.
But the state of 33 million people has since told the federal government it will withdraw from the FTSC program, the three officials said.
Jharkhand’s top legal bureaucrat, Rajesh Sharan Singh, said officials have been consulting on the management of FTSCs that are entirely funded by the state, one of India’s poorest, but he declined to say why.
“If the state government funds it, we will abandon central government funding,” he said.
Chief Minister Hemant Soren’s office did not respond to questions from Reuters.
(Graphic by Kripa Jayaram and Sumanta Sen; Editing by Katerina Ang)