High court fails to deliver verdict for 6 years, Supreme Court shifts case to itself

NEW DELHI: In a first-of-its-kind intervention and an embarrassment to Allahabad high court, Supreme Court has directed transfer of three petitions pertaining to a case from the high court to itself for adjudication as the high court sat on the verdict after reserving the order six years back relating to a criminal case of 1994 in which the trial also remained stayed. The court said its intervention in a matter which is in high court's domain was needed to ensure speedy justice.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta directed Registrar General of the high court to transmit to the registry of Supreme Court the complete record of the three criminal revisions within three weeks. The high court has recently come under criticism from the Supreme Court, which raised serious concerns over the manner in which orders were passed. The case has been pending in high court since 2012.

Justifying its decision to invoke the extraordinary power under Article 139A, which allows Supreme Court to withdraw cases pending before high courts and dispose of them itself, Supreme Court said the order was reserved in Feb 2020 but the judgment had not been delivered in all these years. Supreme Court said trial in the three-decade-old criminal case was stayed because high court had not decided the revisions.

"In these circumstances, the questions that arise are not confined to private interests of parties in a pending revision. They implicate the effective enforcement of binding directions of this Court, the constitutional requirement of timely adjudication after a matter is heard and judgment is reserved, and the credibility of criminal process in serious offences where long delay itself produces irreversible prejudice," the bench said.

Supreme Court said the extraordinary jurisdiction of Supreme Court must be exercised with great circumspection and only in rare situations where continuing inaction results in infringement of fundamental rights and no equally efficacious remedy is available.

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