By Jay Prakash Pandey
In India, justice doesn’t knock. It reschedules. Again and again. In fact, the most familiar face in our courtrooms is not the judge—it is the clerk handing out “Next Date”.
Forget verdicts. The average citizen here has received more dates from the court than from destiny. Pick any case file: you’ll find layers of delay on the surface, while justice lies smothered somewhere beneath, like an undiagnosed disease politely ignored by the doctor.
Our prisons are filled with people who haven’t been proven guilty but are already being punished. They are undertrials. They count their time in dates, not days. Their cell is not a punishment; it is a waiting room with no token number. Some spend spring after spring inside, like human wall clocks ticking quietly behind bars.
Here, justice isn’t a right. It’s a ritual of patience. A sacred ceremony where no flames burn, only smoke rises from the holy mantra: “Next Date”.
In 1987, the Law Commission recommended 50 judges per million people. Today, we manage with just 15. Why rush justice when you can meditate on it for decades? Cases are now family heirlooms passed down through generations. At least, justice delays are inclusive. Everyone waits equally. What a democratic experience!
And maybe, just maybe, someone in power once said: “If we actually appoint enough judges, who will sing praises of our grand legacy of judicial slowness? What will happen to the chai stalls outside courtrooms, where justice is boiled, stirred, and gossiped over faster than in court?”
As of December 2023, over 50 million cases are pending in Indian courts. Some are so old, they’re not waiting for justice anymore, just rebirth. Justice here is not “served hot”. It’s frozen, stored, thawed, and re-heated so many times that by the time it’s ready, no one’s hungry.
According to NCRB’s 2022 data, 77% of prisoners in India are undertrials—people who haven’t been proven guilty but live as if they were. The court hasn’t spoken, but the iron bars already have. In our system, punishment doesn’t follow crime it often precedes it.
And if you’re wondering about overcrowding, rest assured—our prisons are running at 131% capacity. True equality exists behind bars. Every caste, language, religion represented equally. The real “unity in diversity”.
At times, it feels like jails are just display units, statistics on parade to show that “something is being done”. Whether the accused is guilty or not is a minor detail. What matters is: someone has been arrested. The rest can be taken care of by our national slogan “The law is taking its own course”.
Once in a while, after 10 or 12 years, the court casually says: “Not guilty.” A sentence that sounds calm but devastates lives. Nobody asks: what about the years wasted? Is there a “Time Refund Certificate”?
In theory, the law says bail should be granted. The Supreme Court said so back in 1979 in the Hussainara Khatoon case. But in real life, bail needs paperwork, a guarantor, and a touch of luck. For a daily wage worker in jail, whose family is just trying to survive on a tea stall or construction site – bail is like an election promise. Heard often. Rarely delivered.
Even the Malimath Committee once advised that bail should be simple. And it is. The form is now just one page. The only catch? That page is usually found buried under a dusty pile on a clerk’s desk just above the prisoner’s fate.
So, if you don’t have education, documents, a guarantor, and grace, don’t worry. The system won’t delay you. It will hand you the Next Date. Like a doctor handing you paracetamol for a bullet wound: “Take this. You’ll feel better.”
On 26 November 2024, the eve of Constitution Day, Home Minister Amit Shah asked states to release undertrials who are eligible for bail. In January 2025, a circular was issued. Monthly reports were demanded. Silence was declared a crime. But justice in India doesn’t move with memos. It needs political muscle and maybe divine intervention.
And we fear that just like so many bold laws that sleep peacefully in dusty government files, Section 479 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, might soon snuggle up in the comfort blanket of “Next Date”.
Until the day the poor stop waiting in prison for a justice that never arrives, we can digitise all we want, reform all we wish but the soul of justice will remain locked in a golden frame, preserved in brochures, not in lives.
(The author is an Independent Columnist, and Manager, ONGC, Dehradun.)
