Mumbai Likely To Need 30 Years To Clear Pending Cases Due to ‘Shortage of Judges'

Mumbai had 76,841 pending cases till the end of 2020, and going by the average completed trials in the last five years, it will take the metro city 30.3 years to just clear the backlog cases, says a study carried out by Praja Foundation on serious criminal cases in the city.

The report further stated that another contributing factor to this backlog is a 30 per cent shortage of prosecutors and judges dealing with such cases. The study titled ‘Crime In India’ analysed legal case data from the period between 2016 and 2020. Recently released by the

National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), and RTI data accessed by the foundation, the study depicts that while the number of pending serious crime cases has been growing in the city, comparatively the trials of such cases are not being completed with equal momentum.

An Indian Express report claims that as per the NCRB data analysis, an average of 2,550 cases have completed trials between 2016-2020 and therefore if the trials continue to take place at this pace, it shall take the courts 30.3 years to complete them in the 76,841 cases pending till the end of 2020.

“These cases are only class II offences, which are tried in the two sessions court (at Kalaghoda and Dindoshi) and the Sewree fast track court. The offences that are classified as Class II offences are murder, murder attempt, homicide, rape, death due to negligence, unnatural offence, miscarriage, abetment to suicide, kidnapping, grievous hurt, poisoning, assault on public servant and hurt,” said the article.

The study found that another worrying roadblock in the legal system is the shortage of prosecutors and judges in the sessions courts. The article quotes Yogesh Mishra, head, research and data, Praja Foundation saying that according to the RTI data accessed for the study, it was found that ‘there is a 30% shortage of personnel (35 working out of 50) in the position of sessions court public prosecutors as of March 2021.’ Apart from that, a 30% shortage was also found in positions of sessions court judges, where only 69 judges were seen to be working out of the total sanctioned strength of 98 as on March 2021.

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