बेबाक · Editorial
When Every Civic Failure Ends as a Writ, the Bench Becomes the Republic's Last Department
From a daily murder trial to compensation for stray-animal accidents, the courts are carrying the state's unfinished business — and straining under the load.
What The Bench Is Doing
Look past the day's political noise and a quieter story emerges from the record: the courtroom, not the podium, is where the republic's hardest questions are being settled. The Delhi High Court declined to impose a deadline on the Shraddha Walkar murder trial, noting hearings are already held daily and asking authorities to expedite the examination of overseas witnesses. A Delhi trial court handed life imprisonment to a former councillor and four others for the 2020 killing of Intelligence Bureau staffer Ankit Sharma. The Meghalaya High Court expressed serious concern over the alleged assault on an advocate by non-state actors. In each, an institution is doing the slow, unglamorous work of adjudication the rest of the state too often leaves to it.
Speed Against Fairness
The central tension is old and unresolved: the public wants verdicts fast, but justice cannot be hurried without being deformed. When the Delhi High Court refuses to set a timeline for concluding a trial, it is not indulging delay; it is recognising that proceedings already being held daily must still preserve a full and fair process. Yet the same restraint, repeated across a strained system, can curdle into denial of its own. A trial that runs daily is a mark of seriousness; a trial that must await overseas witnesses is a reminder that Indian process is being asked to handle facts that cross borders. The bench holds both truths at once.
Steel-Manning Both Sides
Those who demand fixed deadlines have a real grievance: open-ended trials break families, let evidence decay, and let the powerful outlast the process. A timeline can force the system to marshal resources it otherwise delays. But the judges have the stronger constitutional case. A court that binds itself to a calendar, regardless of overseas witnesses or the volume of testimony, invites either rushed acquittals or coerced closure — a betrayal of both the person in the dock and the person in the grave. The honest position is not to choose speed or fairness, but to build the conditions under which both are possible: adequate court capacity, better case management, and faster cooperation when witnesses are outside India.
The Evidence On Record
The docket reaches well beyond crime. The Supreme Court, taking note of accidents caused by stray animals on roads, directed the Centre and the states to develop a mechanism for payment of compensation — a gap now being pushed into judicial design. The Allahabad High Court ordered two adult sisters produced before it in a conversion-and-marriage matter, after they told the court through counsel they had converted voluntarily, without pressure, force, or inducement — a question that must turn on the constitutional test of consent, not social anxiety. Meanwhile the Lok Sabha was told the AIIMS projects at Awantipora and Rewari stand at 78 per cent and 64.85 per cent physical progress, respectively, with both targeted for completion by December 2026.
A Considered Verdict
The concern is not that Indian courts are failing — many of these orders show them functioning with care. The concern is structural. When the apex court must direct a compensation mechanism for stray-animal accidents on roads, and a High Court must personally summon two adult women to verify their own free will, the judiciary is doing work that administration should have anticipated earlier. That grave verdicts are reduced to partisan barbs the moment they are pronounced only deepens the disservice. A republic in which every unresolved civic failure ends as a writ petition is one where governance has quietly abdicated, and the bench has become the department of last resort — respected, overworked, and stretched past what any court was designed to bear.
The Way Forward
The remedy is neither judicial deadlines nor judicial heroics; it is capacity and division of labour. Strengthen the court and administrative machinery that makes daily trials and overseas testimony workable, so no bench must choose between haste and thoroughness. Let the Centre and states pre-empt further judicial intervention by developing clear compensation rules for stray-animal accidents on roads. Equip the police and administration to halt non-state actors before humiliation replaces due process. Hold the executive to its own stated timelines — the December 2026 targets for AIIMS Awantipora and AIIMS Rewari should be met, not merely tabled. A judiciary freed from doing everyone else's job can do its own better. That, not a stopwatch on a murder trial, is how justice stops waiting at the door.
A court that refuses to fix a deadline is not shirking speed; it is refusing to trade fairness for the appearance of it.
The independence of the judiciary and the right to a fair trial are at stake
Fast Track Court Infrastructure
To address the issue of delayed trials, the government should allocate a specific budget line for the establishment of fast-track courts with adequate infrastructure and technology. This would enable the judiciary to handle cases more efficiently without compromising on the principles of fairness and natural justice. A statutory deadline can be set for the implementation of this plan, ensuring that the judiciary has the necessary resources to deliver timely justice.
Your Constitutional Rights
What the Constitution guarantees in this storyThe State shall take steps to separate the judiciary from the executive in the public services.
Directive PrincipleThe right to move the Supreme Court directly to enforce fundamental rights — called by Dr Ambedkar "the heart and soul of the Constitution." The courts can issue writs such as habeas corpus and mandamus.
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 RightThe State shall not deny any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws. Like must be treated alike; the law cannot be arbitrary.
Fundamental RightWhat 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 →