Harshit Malik BALLB 2011

Over

72 lakh criminal cases remain pending in courts1

This article in The Indian Express dated November 2011 shows a major problem faced by Indian judicial system. India in its judicial system has a system of presumption of innocence , much like other nations. However the problem with Indian penalizing system is that it follows a presumption of guilty in the police station and presumption of innocence in the courts. This is what causes conflicts in the entire structure which then leads to inaccurate charges, innocent being convicted and guilty walking on streets. Recent figures show that in India, 1,163,450 criminal cases have got acquittal, which is the highest number of acquittals in Asia 2 having Turkey at second rank with 306,445 acquittals . In any case courts enter, police deals with three parties viz. the suspect, the victims and the witnesses, to frame any charges. It could be argued that major reason for such baseless criminal cases is because of the conflicts that occur at grass root level at the police stations. Indian Police has been facing many cases of harassment of suspects in police custody. Police presume certain facts and charge people without having a strong base in the facts. This leads to many innocent people being stuck in criminal trials for years. Without forming a strong case, conviction is hardly possible, however it makes an individual suffer through the trauma of a long criminal trial. Victims many times avoid going to the police because of the way they are treated by the police. When they do decide to go on with the case, they have to go through pains in the police system. Police does not realize the fact that the individual they are dealing with are victims and not there for fun of court trials. When police investigate from the victims, they attempt to extract valuable facts in least time in possible. This makes it hard for both the victims in their state of mind and the police to convey the valuable information. Same hesitation is faced by the witnesses who are ill-treated by the police and often complain about behavior and attitude of the police men. The examples posed above are some of the ways in which there exist conflicts between the police and the parties involved in the case. Till the time such conflicts are not managed, the criminal system of India would keep holding it back. If this issue has to be overcome, then the conflicts between the parties has to be resolved and all have to cooperate to improve the system of justice. This project offered to us deals with police on conflict strategies and aims to attempt these strategies for efficient working the service. If public gains confidence over the police, that is when the system can finally function properly. Hence this project can make a lot of difference in the way criminal system functions. These are the reasons why this project interests me and I would like to be a part of it.

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http://www.indianexpress.com/news/over-72-lakh-criminal-cases-remain-pending-in-courts/872791/ http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_acq-crime-acquitted