TheDaak review

Book: Stalled Wheels of Justice by Shishir Tripathi, Noida, BlueOne Ink Pvt. Ltd., 2024, Rs. 499, 161 pages, ISBN: 978-81-967375-3-5, Paperback

By Malika Kukreja

The notion of justice in itself connotes fairness and justness for all, but this idea becomes meaningless when justice becomes inaccessible for victims in a society. Shishir Tripathi’s Stalled Wheels of Justice is an account of the various ways and reasons that obstruct the justice system in India. Major reasons behind the obstruction can be, inter alia, the interminable list of pending cases, misuse of the law to forge cases, the poor state of judicial infrastructure, and the cost of access that prohibits an ordinary man’s route to the court. The author has meticulously referred to real-life cases and judicial hearings, from India and abroad, that fall within the jurisprudence of the civil and criminal laws, to show how justice is “expensive, evasive and elusive” for an ordinary citizen (3). The notion of justice is examined both as a political philosophy and as a virtue of a social institution (like a court) through the writings of Plato, Amartya Sen, Norman Barry, John Rawls, Mahatma Gandhi and Michael Sandel. The book does not present any unfamiliar information about the causes of delay for someone acquainted with the basic system of Indian law. Yet it is interesting for a reader, because it embeds extremely relevant factual information about the justice system into the debates that surround its inaccessibility. Tripathi ponders upon the inaccessibility of justice in all its forms – “social, economic, and political”, as enshrined in the Constitution (135). This compels a reader to understand justice beyond a mere philosophical concept and the nature of roadblocks faced by an ordinary citizen when seeking justice in practice.

Tripathi sets off the book with the famous axiom, “Let the law take its course”, debating whether the current circumstances in the country allow justice to truly prevail or not (1). This is to recognise the fact that the prevailing trajectory is awfully slow for a common man and to reiterate that “justice delayed is justice denied” (92). The author views it as a violation of the citizen’s fundamental rights and democratic values, which were inspired by the vision of our freedom fighters. For example, Gandhi’s notion of Ramarajya envisioned that even “the meanest citizen could be sure of swift justice without an elaborate and costly procedure” (134). The book is divided into seven chapters, with the first four chapters extensively illustrating the challenges that stall the wheels of justice in India, while the last three focus on the remedies that could possibly help in making amends, if not entirely rectifying the issues. The core problem identified by Tripathi is the long pendency and backlog of cases as he quotes sources like former Judge VV Rao from 2010 and the 2018 published NITI Aayog strategy paper that amounts the current backlog to be cleared in about 320-324 years (125). It is distressing to realise the majority of the litigants in the said cases would not even be alive to witness if justice was delivered. The author strives to discuss the obstructions that further add to this backlog every single day.

The most pressing issue connected with the backlog is the delay in the process of justice resulting from tedious paperwork, erratic court hearings, lack of implementation of relevant procedures of law, etc. The first chapter, “Justice Delayed, Denied”, presents these issues of delay citing case studies that took almost 30 years to deliver final judgements. While the course of time is an evident concern, its implications on the lives of the accused in terms of their social reputation (at times, even costing their own lives) are inadmissible. For instance, Tripathi discusses the case of Umakant Mishra, a postman accused of stealing 57 rupees and 60 paise from a money order in 1985 (15-16). Although Mishra was acquitted in 2013 after a long battle of 29 years, he spent his entire life labelled as a thief among his community members. The repercussion is the heavy cost of justice that the author discusses in the second chapter of the book. Ceiling-high fees of the advocates are often unaffordable for a common man, and “the economic barrier does play a significant impediment to access to justice” (48). The consequence of these two factors, namely the heavy cost of justice and the delay in the process, often erodes the faith of the public in the justice system itself. While big corporate houses or celebrities can afford reputed lawyers charging crores for a single hearing, justice becomes inaccessible for ordinary people who constitute the majority of the litigants. Tripathi cites the example of the case of the famous actress Kangana Ranaut, whose house was illegitimately demolished by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in 2021. In order to defend itself, the BMC paid a total of Rupees 82.5 lakhs to its attorney, even though the case was decided in favour of Ms Ranaut (57). As a reader, it makes me wonder about the resources that allow government departments like the BMC to afford these high costs. Although guidelines recommending capping of fees have been pushed through on several occasions, they have rarely met with any success. 

The access to justice is further compromised when laws are misused by certain parties towards their own benefit. In the third chapter, “Misuse of Law, Travesty of Justice”, the author references the two commonly misused laws of Section 498A and 376 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that concern the matters of dowry and rape, respectively. It is emphasised that while these provisions were made to protect vulnerable women, they have often been misused to punish or tarnish innocent people. The author observes that the misuse of law often replaces the presumption of innocence with the presumption of guilt for the accused, and the principle of delivering justice to one innocent person, even at the cost of ten guilty persons, becomes a challenge for a fair trial (78). Such instances not only add to the rising number of cases, but also cause a waste of the judiciary’s valuable time. The value of time becomes more pertinent when access to justice is hindered owing to poor judicial infrastructure. Chapter 4, “Infrastructural Woes”, highlights that the problems of limited budget, lack of adequate physical space and facilities in judicial complexes, along with insufficient human resources supplement the delay in justice. Tripathi records the Law Minister informing the Rajya Sabha in 2021, that about 26 percent of the courts in the country did not have a separate toilet for women (90). As a reader, one is urged to wonder more about the social barriers faced by women inside the court and if the physical infrastructure already inhibits their access. Although there exist government schemes that target better judicial infrastructure, the lack of accountability prohibits proper implementation of such schemes. Addressing this concern, Tripathi suggests that, “In the age of machine learning, the judiciary need not be a Remington typewriter; it needs to be sophisticated, tech-savvy, and driven by the zeitgeist of high productivity” (100). 

The last three chapters focus on remedies such as the right to free legal aid, the subject of Public Interest Litigation (PIL) and alternate dispute redressal mechanisms like Lok Adalats, which ease the burden of delay on the judiciary and prevent the heavy cost of justice for the poor people. For example, the Legal Services Authorities Act provides for free legal aid for targeted sections of society to improve their access to justice. Similarly, the provision of PIL has led to several landmark judgements that addressed issues of workplace sexual harassment or decriminalising homosexuality. However, this is not to say that these remedies have resolved all the problems associated with the Indian justice system or that they haven’t been misused in many instances. Nevertheless, they can be considered smaller steps in the direction of tackling the bigger problem of pendency and delay of justice. 

Tripathi, in the book Stalled Wheels of Justice, recognises that these wheels are moving, but “they move at their own pace”, given the discussed issues  (1). As a court reporter covering legal issues for prominent newspapers, Tripathi’s strength lies in uncovering these vital issues in the book through his simplistic style of writing, and yet substantiating his arguments with relevant cases and statistics from recent national surveys, press articles, original court hearings and valued opinions of sitting advocates and judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts across the country. It is a well-researched critique that has inculcated the various ideas of justice from Rawls, Sandel, Gandhi and Sen, but at times, the lengthy quotes from judgements or the cited laws and terms can be complex for a novice. Moreover, the academic nature of the book can make it feel very repetitive in terms of the angles of injustice explored in the book. Personally, I found the book immersive for the range of historical to recent contexts that draw attention to the grave inadequacies that smudge the Indian justice system and require urgent policy and practical interventions. But, I am left wondering if the recent introduction of the three new laws, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, that have replaced the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), and the Indian Evidence Act respectively, will serve the purpose of improving access to justice.