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Mobs are taking
over because courts are failing: SC
WSN Network
Kanyakumari: At a time when the Indian newspapers have been
regularly reporting incidents of mobs taking out their anger and
rage on one or the other criminal thus serving instant justice, a
phrase coined by the Indian media to explain various such instances,
the Supreme Court has said all of this was happening because people
feel that justice will not be done due to inordinate delay in
judicial proceedings.
Recently, in a
bone chilling incident, 10 thieves in Bihar were lynched to death.
Disposing off a 60-year-old civil case from Kanyakumari in Tamil
Nadu, a bench of Justices A.K. Mathur and Markandey Katju said:
"This is obviously because many people have started thinking that
justice will not be done in the courts due to the delays in court
proceedings."
"This is indeed an
alarming state of affairs, and we once again request the concerned
authorities to do the needful in the matter urgently before the
situation goes out of control," it said. This is the second time in
the past one month that the court has expressed its "deep concern at
excessive delay in disposal of cases in the country".
"People in India
are simply disgusted with the state of affairs, and are fast losing
faith in the judiciary because of the inordinate delay in disposal
of cases," the court had said on August 23 while disposing off a
50-year-old land dispute case in Dehra Dun. "A suit filed in 1857
has rolled on for half a century," the court had said comparing it
with the case of Jarndyce Vs. Jarndyce in Charles Dickens' novel
'Bleak House', which had rolled on for cades.
The present case
between Moses Wilson and others Versus Kasturiba and others, a suit
for a sum of Rs 7,000, was filed in 1947 at Kanyakumari over a
dispute about dry fish. A third party claimed ownership of the dry
fish and the case dragged on for 60 years. With the consent of the
parties, the court directed that the property in question be divided
equally between the two parties.
26
September, 2007
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