India's Home Minister Amit Shah. Reuters File Photo
India's interior minister has pledged to address chronic court backlogs by granting bail to detainees awaiting trial for non-serious offenses who have served at least a third of their potential sentence. The world's most populous nation grapples with a notoriously sluggish justice system, with millions of cases pending in the courts. Government statistics from early 2024 reveal that at least 134,799 individuals are in detention awaiting trial, including 11,448 who have been in jail without a sentence for over five years. While the exact number of detainees affected by the new bail conditions remains unspecified, Home Minister Amit Shah emphasized that eligible prisoners should receive bail before India's Constitution Day on November 26. Shah expressed his commitment to establishing a 'scientific and speedy' criminal justice system in India.
'It is our effort that before Constitution Day, there should not be a single prisoner in the country's jails who has served one-third of his sentence and has not yet got justice,' Shah stated in a speech to police officers on Tuesday, as reported by the Times of India newspaper. 'If a trial is not progressing after a certain period, then... the jail officer will have to initiate the bail process within the court,' he added. Notably, those accused of serious crimes, including detainees held under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which permits indefinite detention without trial, are ineligible for this bail provision. Critics argue that the UAPA has been employed by the government to suppress dissent. Last year, the Supreme Court cautioned that victims may lose faith in the legal process due to its glacial pace, with some trials extending up to 65 years. The lack of investment in digital systems to streamline and organize hearings, coupled with a low ratio of judges—just 21 per million of the population in India—contributes to the system's notorious slowness.
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