Article Title: Why there is an urgent need to reform India’s judicial system

Article Summary

The article discusses on why there is a need to reform India’s Judicial System. The author cites certain instances on why this issue should be dealt urgently. The author emphasises that in order to improve the ease of living of the common man in India, the government should work on the criminal justice system and make it quick and efficient. He further states that India has one of the world’s largest number of undertrial prisoners. They languish in jail not because they have been found guilty and sentenced to jail terms but because they are being prosecuted on charges that are too severe to warrant bail, or simply because they are too poor and disempowered to obtain bail.

The author makes the important point that People at the bottom rungs of social power account for the bulk of undertrials. In various stances, young Muslim Men were picked up on terror charges and were put in jail for a long time. Occasionally victims of this were scientists as well. Here the author gives the example of ISRO (Indian space research organisation) scientist Nambi Narayanan who was falsely accused of leaking important information. He was tortured, sent to jail; his life and career succumbed away for something he did not commit. Similarly senior scientist Narayan Waman was accused of leaking a report of a German radar its producer wanted to sell to the Indian army. It took three decades for the case to be dismissed but only at the level of the trial court. At the end he concludes that the government must act decisively to end this system of justice being delayed and being out of reach for anyone other than the affluent citizens and proposes ways how to get the judicial system on the right track.