NEW DELHI: Voicing serious concern over the “extraordinary delay” by the Allahabad High Court in deciding a 40-year-old criminal appeal filed by a man convicted of murder, the Supreme Court recently termed this delay “extremely disturbing” and said what could be done to ease the pendency in the HC.
“If a man has to wait 40 years for his appeal to be heard, it defeats the very purpose of filing an appeal,” said a two-judge bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and S Chandurkar.
The bench made these observations against the Allahabad HC, after hearing an appeal filed by the convict, Vijay Singh, seeking immediate direction to the HC for taking up his plea pending for four decades.
Singh was convicted by the trial court in 1984 under Section 302 (Murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sentenced to life imprisonment. He preferred an appeal before the Allahabad High Court the same year, but unfortunately this has been pending since then, and no significant hearing has been conducted so far.
Surprisingly, Singh, now 68, served nearly 17 years in prison before the HC granted him bail in 2000. The appeal has not been heard on merits yet by the HC.
Singh was arrested in November 1983 when he was 28 years old for allegedly shooting his brother dead.
While passing certain directions, the SC kept Singh’s Special Leave Petition (SLP) pending and directed the HC to list his criminal appeal for final hearing within three months.
The court, however, made clear it was not faulting any individual judge but stressed that systemic reform was needed.
It had also called the delay disturbing and asked what “innovative measures” could be taken to ease the heavy pendency burdening the Allahabad HC’s justice delivery system.
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