The disorder of law

Poor conviction rates underline the failure of the system

The abysmally low rate of conviction in criminal cases is a matter of serious concern. The latest figures of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) are, in fact, a sharp indictment of the criminal justice system. Of the total cases registered by the police, only a small fraction ends up in the accused being convicted. An overwhelming majority of the cases fall by the wayside; they are not investigated or they are not chargesheeted or they are not tried. The end result is that a majority of the accused in criminal cases escape punishment. From the criminal justice point of view, it is a serious flaw in the system because, in the ultimate analysis, it is the certainty of punishment and not its severity that deters crime. To put it differently, criminals are now entitled to the belief that they can get away with their acts. Small wonder that the rate of crimes in the country has been increasing. The Bureau has suggested a sharp reduction in the trial period of criminal cases to restore the people’s faith in the system. That such a need cannot be overemphasised is borne out by the fact that while the accused in the Barings Bank case in Singapore was tried, convicted and punished, the main accused in the stock exchange scam in India is yet to be punished.

The inadequacies of the investigative system are mainly to blame for the low conviction rate. To begin at the beginning, the First Information Report (FIR) is a crucial document for it can make or mar a criminal case. But who drafts the FIR in most cases? It’s not a highly qualified or highly paid IPS officer but a lowly constable, whose knowledge of the law is limited to what he learns in the course of writing FIRs. Finding and producing witnesses in the court is a laborious exercise and, therefore, it is not uncommon for the police to depend on professional witnesses. And where such professional witnesses cannot be produced, as in the Jessica Lal murder case for instance, the police avoid the practice of taking the witnesses to a magistrate to record their statements. Thus it becomes easier for the witnesses to turn hostile. In any case, in the police department the best talent is never deployed for following up such cases, which are crucial for their success. There are no schemes of incentives and disincentives to motivate police officers to see that the cases under their charge are taken to their logical conclusion.

The police have a point that the court procedures are so cumbersome and time-consuming that, hard-pressed as they are for time, they are unable to cope with the demands. The finding of the NCRB is quite startling: in nearly 50 per cent cases, it takes five years for the court to dispose of a case from the time it is registered. The trauma that the victim of, say, a rape case has to undergo during this period is unimaginable. There is, therefore, need to evolve systems whereby cases which attract lesser punishment are disposed of quickly so that they don’t clog up the system. But even in areas where traditional systems of jurisprudence exist, like in tribal areas, the attempt is to standardise the criminal justice system. Unless reforms are made to ensure that no criminal escapes punishment, people will lose their faith in the system.