बेबाक · Editorial
From a 22-year passport case to UAPA bail pleas, the courts test the promise of equal justice
A week of verdicts and pending pleas shows the law can reach many accused, yet its clock can still punish the untried by process alone.
A week in the dock
Within days, courts across the country delivered a cross-section of Indian justice. A Delhi court sentenced a former municipal councillor and four others to life for the 2020 northeast Delhi riots killing of Intelligence Bureau staffer Ankit Sharma, while rejecting the death penalty because the prosecution had not shown the convicts were beyond reformation. A special CBI court in Chennai jailed gangster Chhota Rajan for seven years for obtaining a passport using forged documents under the identity of Vijaya Kadam. The Supreme Court granted interim anticipatory bail in the Tamil Nadu TASMAC corruption matter, staying arrest subject to conditions and directing cooperation with the investigation, while the Delhi High Court sought Delhi Police's response to activist Umar Khalid's fresh UAPA bail plea. One theme binds them: the courtroom as the republic's last honest room.
Verdict versus velocity
The tension is not guilt against innocence; it is verdict against velocity. The same institutions that convict a gangster and test an arrest request can also take time to answer a plea for liberty. The Chhota Rajan passport conviction arrived after 22 years of proceedings. In the northeast Delhi riots conspiracy case, a fresh bail plea under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act is awaiting the Delhi Police's response and a scheduled hearing. When conviction takes decades, and when the adjudication of liberty itself moves slowly, the process risks becoming a punishment that no sentence formally imposes and no acquittal can ever refund to the accused.
Steel-manning both sides
The case for patience is real. UAPA cases, organised-crime prosecutions and murder trials can involve voluminous evidence, overseas witnesses and conspiracy allegations that cannot be tried casually; the Delhi High Court itself, refusing to fix a deadline in the Shraddha Walkar murder trial, noted that proceedings were being held daily and requested authorities to expedite examination of overseas witnesses. Rushed trials produce unsafe convictions. Yet the countervailing case is stronger where liberty is at stake. An accused convicted of nothing retains the presumption of innocence, and prolonged pre-trial custody can invert it. Precision cannot be sacrificed for speed; but neither can liberty be sacrificed to a listing calendar.
What the bench itself said
The judiciary has supplied its own corrective. The Supreme Court observed this week that cryptic bail orders need not be revisited, because a person's liberty does not depend on the inaccuracy of a court but rests on the strength of the prosecution's case. The Delhi court's refusal of the death penalty, grounded in the absence of proof that the convicts were beyond reformation, reflects the same discipline: the state must earn every deprivation it seeks. When lawful process slows or frays, worse impulses fill the vacuum, as the High Court of Meghalaya indicated while expressing serious concern over the alleged assault and parading of an accused advocate by non-state actors. These are instructions, not soft observations: liberty is the rule, its denial the reasoned exception.
The considered verdict
Equality before the law is being demonstrated in outcomes. A gangster and a former municipal councillor have answered to a bench, and arrest in a corruption case has been tested against judicial conditions. That is worth defending against the cynicism that says consequence is always selective. But equality in speed remains fragile. Twenty-two years to a passport verdict, and slow answers to liberty pleas, mean that the unbailied may suffer burdens the statute has not finally sanctioned. The judiciary is also the citizen's shield, as the Allahabad High Court showed in asking for two adult sisters to be brought before it after they said they had voluntarily converted from Hinduism to Islam without pressure, force or inducement. That shield rusts when the docket overwhelms it. Justice that arrives is not the same as justice that arrives in time.
The way forward
The remedy is administrative before it is philosophical. High Courts should set internal timelines for disposing of bail applications in custody cases: not trial deadlines that risk shortcuts, but calendars for liberty decisions. Special courts trying terror, organised-crime and heinous offences need dedicated benches, filled prosecution vacancies and funded witness logistics, including secure video procedures for overseas testimony, so that daily hearings become more achievable. Appellate courts should keep insisting, as the Supreme Court did, that bail turn on the prosecution's case, not a judge's phrasing. The dock has held its side of the bargain; the calendar must now hold its own, so that the process never becomes the punishment.
A republic is judged not only by whom it convicts, but by how carefully and promptly it answers pleas for liberty.
Your Constitutional Rights
What the Constitution guarantees in this storyAn arrested person must be told the grounds of arrest, may consult a lawyer of their choice, and must be produced before a magistrate within 24 hours.
Fundamental RightNo person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except by a fair, just and reasonable procedure established by law — read by the courts to include dignity, privacy, health, a clean environment and livelihood.
Fundamental RightNo one can be convicted under a retrospective law, punished twice for the same offence, or compelled to be a witness against themselves.
Fundamental RightThe State shall take steps to separate the judiciary from the executive in the public services.
Directive PrincipleWhat this editorial rests on
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An editorial is the considered opinion of The Mudda desk, argued from the sourced reporting above and written under our published persona, बेबाक. We name institutions and actors; we do not endorse or attack any political party. "The Mudda's Ask" is a citizen's good-faith policy proposal, grounded in the Constitution — not the platform of any party. Translations are faithful — no fact is added in any language. If we are wrong, we will say so. How we work →