Full Judgement
Imtiyaz Ahmad Vs. State of Uttar Pradesh & Ors.
[Criminal Appeal Nos.254-262 of 2012 @ SLP (CRL.) Nos. 1581-1598/2009]
O R D E R
GANGULY, J.
Leave granted.
1. Heard learned counsel for the parties, including the learned Amicus Curiae.
2. In these appeals, this Court is concerned with a case where orders were passed by the High Court on several dates after the registration of FIR and on stay order being granted, investigation, and framing of charges or trial thereafter in the matter remained pending in the High Court for a long period of time. The stay order dated 9.4.03 and several orders dated 29.4.03, 30.4.03, 10.10.03, 7.5.04, 26.5.05, 19.9.06, 27.9.06, 6.10.06 & 18.12.08 of the High Court passed thereafter have been impugned in these appeals.
3. The questions which crop up in this case are of serious magnitude and transcend the immediate facts in the appeal and are of great national importance.
4. These appeals are directed against a batch of interlocutory orders passed by a learned Single Judge of Allahabad High Court in Criminal Writ Petition No. 1786/2003 pending before the learned Judge.
5. It appears that by order dated 9.4.2003, the learned Single Judge admitted the writ petition filed by respondent Nos. 2 and 3 herein and also stayed the order dated 7.12.2002 passed by the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Gautam Budh Nagar whereby direction had been given for registration of case against the said respondents. Thereafter, the matter has been listed on various days before the High Court but the matter was getting adjourned. As on the date of filing of the SLP, the writ petition had been kept pending for six years.
6. The SLP came up for hearing before this Court on 8.1.2010. This Court was very greatly concerned about the manner in which criminal investigation and trial have been stayed by the High court and also being aware of the fact that similar cases are happening in several High Courts in India wanted a serious consideration of the issues and appointed Mr. Gopal Subramanium, Senior Advocate (at that time Solicitor General of India) to assist the Court as Amicus Curiae.
7. The Court also issued a direction dated 8.1.2010 to the Registrars General/Registrars of all the High Courts in the country to furnish a report containing statistics of cases pending in the respective High Courts in which the proceedings have been stayed at the stage of registration of FIR, investigation, framing of charges and/or trial in exercise of power under Article 226 of the Constitution or Sections 482 and/or 397 of the Code of Criminal Procedure . The report was to deal with the following types of cases:
a. murder,
b. rape,
c. kidnapping, and
d. dacoity.
8. In response to the above direction, most of the High Courts submitted their reports. Two High Courts, Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh, reported that they do not have any such pending criminal cases of the types mentioned above. The reports submitted by different High Courts disclosed that altogether there were large number of such cases pending. Such pendency of cases was analyzed by the Amicus Curiae with the valuable assistance of Dr. Pronab Sen, Secretary and Dr. G.C. Manna, Deputy Director in the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
9. The important findings arrived at after the analysis of the data are as under:
a. Out of the four categories of cases, murder cases were found to be the most common type, accounting for 45% of all the cases.
b. About one-fourth of all the cases pending are for 2 to 4 years from the date of stay order. Nearly 8% of the cases are, however, pending for 6 years or more.
c. In most of the cases in different High Courts, the duration for which the case is pending varies from 1 to 4 years. It is seen that 34 out of 201 cases in Patna High Court and 33 out of 653 cases in Allahabad High Court are pending for 8 years or more.
10. About total pendency, in the report dated 12.4.10 filed by the Amicus, the following position emerges. Table 1 below shows the total number of cases pending in each High Court and the percentage share of the total pendency.
TABLE 1: TOTAL PENDENCY
High Court
Number of criminal cases by type
Murder
Rape
Kidnapping
Dacoity
All
% share of High Court in total number of cases
Allahabad
144
100
341
68
653
28.6
Andhra Pradesh
46
8
2
4
60
2.6
Bihar
92
36
42
31
201
8.8
Bombay
14
5
4
6
29
1.3
Chhattisgarh
4
0
0
1
5
0.2
Delhi
4
5
2
0
11
0.5
Gauhati
6
5
2
8
21
0.9
Gujarat
56
9
34
16
115
5.0
J & K
4
4
6
0
14
0.6
Jharkhand
18
11
12
0
41
1.8
Karnataka
11
4
4
3
22
1.0
Kerala
12
2
5
1
20
0.9
Kolkata
431
209
21
48
709
31.1
Madhya Pradesh
10
14
1
5
30
1.3
Madras
0
1
2
0
3
0.1
Orissa
111
40
26
10
187
8.2
Punjab & Haryana
17
9
5
1
32
1.4
Rajasthan
23
11
17
5
56
2.5
Uttarakhand
18
19
24
10
71
3.1
All
1021
492
550
217
2280
100
11. It may be seen that the Hon'ble Calcutta High Court has the highest percentage share (31.1%) in total number of cases. It is followed by the Hon'ble High Courts of Allahabad (28.6%), Patna 7 (8.8%) and Orissa (8.2%). Thus, these four High Courts taken together account for 76.9% of all the pendency.
12. Table 2 gives the distribution of all cases and the period for which the cases are pending in each High Court.
TABLE 2: DURATION OF PENDENCY
High Court
Duration for which pending
Nil
<6m
6m-1y
1-2y
2-4y
4-6y
6-8y
>8y
All
Allahabad
1
38
126
190
158
90
17
33
653
Andhra Pradesh
0
16
16
17
11
0
0
0
60
Bihar
70
14
11
33
27
8
4
34
201
Bombay
0
1
6
8
6
3
2
3
29
Chhattisgarh
0
1
0
0
0
1
2
1
5
Delhi
0
1
2
4
0
3
1
0
11
Gauhati
0
3
5
4
3
0
6
0
21
Gujarat
0
8
6
34
46
20
1
0
115
J & K
0
5
2
3
4
0
0
0
14
Jharkhand
0
7
4
2
9
3
9
7
41
Karnataka
9
4
3
5
0
1
0
0
22
Kerala
0
1
0
1
5
13
0
0
20
Kolkata
7
40
104
135
209
176
38
0
709
Madhya Pradesh
0
2
6
2
12
6
1
1
30
Madras
0
1
0
1
1
0
0
