Machal Lalung

Photo by: Subhamoy Bhattacharya


On 31 October 2018, the Supreme Court gave its verdict on Hashimpura massacre case. It was a case of May 1987 when 42 Muslims were picked up from Hashimpura, Meerut by Uttar Pradesh PAC(provincial armed constabulary) and later they were shot dead. After that, they were thrown into a canal. In 1988, investigation of that massacre started by CB-CID on the directions of Uttar Pradesh government and they submitted their report in 1994 when 19 police personnel were found accused. After 31 years of the judicial process, during which 3 police personnel got died, 16 accused were found guilty and the court gave them life imprisonment.

There is another famous case in June 1997 of Uphaar Cinema in Delhi, when a fire took place in a cinema hall and 59 people died due to suffocation. Later an inquiry committee formed and it said in its report that such mishap took place due to faults of the owner of the cinema hall. After which judicial process started from the lower court then high court and finally at the Supreme Court. It took 18 years when the Supreme Court gave its ruling on it in 2015.

Third and the worst example of judicial failure was a case of Machal Lalung. He was a person from Tiwa tribe in Morigaon, Assam. When he was just 23 years of age in 1951, he was arrested on the charges of "causing grievous harm". The Court gave him a jail term of ten years. But due to health issues, he was transferred to a psychiatric institution in Tezpur, where he was forgotten. In 1967, the doctors certified him as fit, and he was moved to a jail in Guwahati, where he spent nearly four decades. He was released in 2005 after the local human rights groups brought his case to the attention of the National Human Right Commission. It was found that he was punished for the crime which he has not committed. When he released from the jail he was of 77 years old. The supreme court of India ordered the government of Assam to compensate him and provide him with a monthly assistance amount. He was not able to speak Assamese, Hindi or English. He was known only his tribal language. That’s why he was not able to communicate with police and other officials. Lalung died in 2007.

So when we look at the above examples then one question arises that "do they really got justice?" Then some optimistic people may call it "yes!" they got justice. Some can call it, "no" it was not justice at all. But for me, it is quite confusing. I mean when someone commits a crime he should be punished accordingly but what if an accused got punishment after 10 or 20 or 30 years after the scene. Then is it really a justice with them?

In such a situation, those who are victims of the incident are tortured mentally and financially even after coming into the judicial process because of the long time required in it. You can also estimate yourself that after an incident, which has ruined many families, has made many children orphans and homeless, will people have the patience of going through such a long judicial process even when they are not sure about how long It will take to get justice. So it has been observed that the victim side feel a double burden on them.

When any criminal incident happens in our country then it affects differently on people from a different class.

When the victim belongs to a poor or weaker section of the society then it becomes quite difficult for them to carry on their legal fight because he knows the process, he wants to be in, will exhaust not only his precious savings but also he may not be able to carry on his fights against accused because of lack of patience required in it, for such a long period. In such cases, sometimes victim compromises with the accused by taking some amount of money.

The second condition is that when a victim is from elite, educated or from middle class then anyhow they show their belief in the process but after waiting up 20 or 30 years if they got justice then they have no reason to feel happy because quite had have changed in their life. There may be chances that the accused got died or at the time of the ruling, he may not be able to get jailed due to health or other reason.

In this way, the main reason for all such delay indicates that there is a lot of problems with our judicial system. If we look at the data, it tells that there are only 17 judges per 10 million people in India. If we include all the courts then there is a requirement of 50,000 judges across the country but there are only 18,000 are serving presently. If we include all the courts of the country then there are approximately 30 million cases are pending at present time, in which 60,260 are pending before the Supreme Court and 38.68 Lakh cases awaiting its disposal in high courts of India. Apart from this, there is the inadequacy of staff attached to courts. So, it could be said that there is a lack of overall judicial infrastructure in our country.  

After observing the above data, it seems that this is a problem that's not too big to solve but it requires willpower for governments. It seems that if the government wants, then this problem can be solved. Though it's a big challenge for a democratic state like ours because when we talk about our constitution then it says that there should be equal protection of law and equality before the law but the reality seems contradictory to it. Such an avoidance by our judiciary has affected many people in spite of that this issue has been discussed very less. So, the government should consider this as an issue which needs major reform in its infrastructural level because it affects the lives of people and makes them worst.