Allahabad HC takes 4 decades to decide on murder conviction appeal

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court was extremely disappointed on Monday to find that a man — arrested as a 28-year-old in Nov 1983 for shooting dead a person — waited for more than four decades in the Allahabad high court for a decision on his appeal against conviction and a life term awarded by a trial court.

A visibly disturbed bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and AS Chandurkar wondered as to what innovative measures could be taken to free the clogged wheels of justice in the Allahabad HC, where long and heavy pendency of pleas has constantly fuelled the filing of appeals in SC for a direction to the HC for expeditious hearing.

On learning that the man was in custody for just three months and had been on bail for nearly 43 years, the bench continued his bail during the pendency of his appeal against the high court judgment, which had a gestation period of 41 years.

Justice Mishra asked senior advocate Siddharth Dave and advocate Zoheb Hossain as to what could be done to expedite hearings in the HC to unclog the justice delivery system. Dave said one way was to dismiss all prosecution appeals pending for three decades.

The bench disagreed and said the basics of adjudication do not permit dismissal just because of long pendency, and no one knows what harm it would cause to public interest if prosecution appeals were dismissed without giving them an opportunity to address the court.

In the case in hand, a 28-year-old Vijay Singh was convicted for murder in Dec 1985 by a sessions court in Kanpur, two years after he shot dead his brother. He immediately appealed against the trial court verdict before HC, which, in a 20-page judgment on Feb 9 this year, dismissed his appeal.

Singh’s appeal stated, “He is now 72 years old. For over four decades, through youth, middle age, and now old age, he has lived under the shadow of that conviction...His criminal appeal languished before the HC for 40 years before being finally heard and dismissed almost summarily.”

“This Special Leave Petition is, in the truest sense, his last recourse and, as will be demonstrated, the conviction itself rests on deeply infirm foundations which have been completely overlooked by the high court,” Vijay Singh said.