Famous jurist Nani Palkhivala once said that, “The greatest drawback of the administration of justice in India today is because of delay of cases. The law may or may not be an ass, but in India, it is certainly a snail and our cases proceed at a pace which would be regarded as unduly slow in the community of snails. Justice has to be blind but I see no reason why it should be lame. Here it just hobbles along, barely able to work.” [1]
Around three crore cases are pending in India, so the Indian judicial system needed an alternative to address this problem. Even the Chief Justice of India in his speech showed his deep concern towards this pathetic condition of pendency of cases. There are various high profiles criminal cases in India which are delayed to a high extent. Some of the examples of are Uphaar Cinema fire case [2] in which the decision was delayed beyond imagination and the decision came after 18 years , amongst many others.
To address such delay in cases, concept of Plea bargaining was introduced under Criminal Amendment Act, 2005. Plea bargaining in layman’s language can be said to be a pre- trial negotiations which happens between the defendant through his counsel and the prosecution in which the accused agrees that hell plead guilty if in exchange he is given lesser sentence. Supreme Court has never accepted the concept of Plea Bargaining whole heartedly. They have shown their discontent to this even before plea bargaining was introduced in the Indian Criminal System [3]
In Murlidhar Meghraj Loya vs. State of Maharashtra, Justice Krishna Iyer said that the Criminal system of India does not include any scheme which is related to Plea Bargaining. “The accused were being tried for selling adulterated food under Prevention of food adulteration act, The Court got an impression that the accused have pleaded guilty before the Magistrate court in accordance with the informal tripartite agreement resembling the plea bargaining applicable in United States” [4]
The Hon’ble Supreme Court in Kachhia Patel Shantilal Koderlal v. State of Gujarat [5]
declared plea bargaining itself is unconstitutional and would lead to widespread corruption. Also it was said by the court in Kasambhai v. State of Gujarat [6] that since India is a country which is prone to corruption and the concept of Plea bargaining is really a vulnerable one and can be very easily abused.
In another case, Supreme Court [7] held that Plea Bargaining is in a way violative of Article 21 of the Indian Constitution and such a scheme should not be practiced in Indian law. The Supreme Court in State of Uttar Pradesh vs. Chandrika [8] held the order given by the High Court to be unreasonable and said that Plea Bargaining to be absent in the Indian Criminal Law arena .
From the above given cases , it can be very well understood that the Criminal System in India is not ready to adopt any such scheme of Plea Bargaining on the same scale as in USA. This may be because we are not able to have a psyche nor do we have required infrastructure which enables us to accept agreement that can happen between an accused and a victim. The remarkably valid reason for adopting such a scheme under the Indian Criminal System is that the jails in India have over 65% people who are only under-trials and maximum number of the inmates has committed such crimes which can be solved by the scheme of Plea Bargaining. But it can be clearly seen from the cases mentioned above that the judiciary is very discontent about the scheme and considers it as a process which can intrude the interest of the society. But it has also been upheld by the court that the delay in the trial commencement is bad and something is to be done so that there are no delays. All great countries have accepted, hope India also adopts the practice of Plea Bargaining.
[1] Nani A Palkhivala, “We the nation – lost decade (1994), UBS Publications, p 215.
[2] 2002 IVAD Delhi 979, 98 (2002) DLT 175, 2002 (63) DRJ 461.
[3] Madanlal Ram Chandra Daga vs. State of Maharashtra ; A.I.R 1968 SC 1267.
[4] Murlidhar Meghraj Loya vs. State of Maharashtra ; A.I.R 1976 SC 1929.
[5] Kachhia Patel Shantilal Koderlal v. State of Gujarat and Anr ; 1980 CriLJ.
[6] Kasambhai v. State of Gujarat ; AIR 1980 SC 854.
[7] Thippaswamy vs. State of Karnataka ; A.I.R 1983 SC 74.
[8] State of Uttar Pradesh vs. Chandrika ; A.I.R 2000 SC 164.
This article is written by
Juhi Anand of
Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University,
Lucknow (RMLNLU)
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