India’s Highest Court Sounds the Alarm: Hundreds of Criminal Trials in J&K Stuck in a Legal Limbo
There is a quiet injustice unfolding in the courts of Jammu and Kashmir — one that doesn’t make headlines as loudly as a verdict, but cuts just as deep. Hundreds of people are sitting behind bars, day after day, year after year, waiting for a trial that never seems to arrive. On March 10, India’s Supreme Court finally said, in unmistakable terms, that this is simply unacceptable.
A bench comprising Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice KV Viswanathan expressed deep dismay after being informed that a staggering 351 sessions trial cases in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir have been dragging on for over five years. Behind those numbers are 585 human beings — accused persons who remain in custody while the wheels of justice grind at a pace so slow it barely moves at all.
What makes the situation even more troubling is where the majority of these cases are stuck. Out of the 351 pending trials, 235 have stalled at the very basic stage of recording oral evidence from witnesses. In other words, the prosecution has not even finished presenting its case in court. Trials cannot move forward, judgments cannot be delivered, and people cannot go home — all because witnesses are not being produced.
Justice Pardiwala did not mince words during the hearing. He asked pointed questions about what exactly the trial courts have been doing while accused individuals spend years behind bars. He questioned whether there is a shortage of judges, a shortage of public prosecutors, or simply a failure of will. He reminded the court that when a person is charged with a crime, they have a constitutional right — enshrined under Article 21 — to a speedy trial. That right, he made clear, is not a courtesy. It is a guarantee.
The context for this hearing traces back to last month, when the Supreme Court granted bail to a man accused in a murder case. His trial had been dragging on for over seven years, and in all that time, the prosecution had managed to examine just seven witnesses. The court was so disturbed by this that it directed Chandraker Bharti, the Principal Home Secretary of J&K, to personally appear before it and present a full account of pending criminal trials where the accused had been in custody for more than five years.
When Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati placed the details on record during the March 10 hearing, the picture that emerged was sobering. In one case alone, there had been 23 hearings where the prosecution failed to produce a single witness. In total, the prosecution had missed 26 opportunities before the trial court and 56 judicial hearings before the Supreme Court itself — and still, progress remained minimal.
The court also heard about another accused individual who has been in jail for over eight years. He was arrested when he was just 19 years old. Today, he remains in custody, still waiting. His lawyer has now filed a writ petition seeking bail.
While the ASG pointed to COVID-19 as a contributing factor in some of the delays, Justice Pardiwala acknowledged that a pandemic-era slowdown was understandable — but the prolonged inaction that followed it was not. A crisis may explain a delay; it does not excuse a collapse.
Importantly, the court was careful to remind everyone that justice must flow in two directions. It is not only the accused who suffer when trials stall — the victims and their families do too. Every day that a trial remains incomplete is another day that families wait for accountability, for closure, for the court to look them in the eye and tell them what happened.
The Supreme Court has now directed that detailed information be submitted in the form of an affidavit — covering when charges were framed, how many witnesses were cited versus examined, and projected timelines for disposal of each of the 235 cases pending at the evidence stage. The Principal Home Secretary has assured the court that he will hold meetings with the concerned agencies and develop a concrete plan.
This case is a stark reminder that justice delayed is not merely a legal inconvenience — it is a lived human experience, measured not in pages of a court file, but in years of someone’s life.
