SC pulls up Centre, Maharashtra govt for not setting up new infra for special courts

Pulling up the Centre and the Maharashtra Government for designating existing courts as special courts, the Supreme Court on Friday asked for creation of new courts meant to try special cases.

“If additional courts are not created, then courts will be forced to grant the accused booked under special statutes bail as there is no effective mechanism for speedy conclusion of trials," a Bench led by Justice Surya Kant told Additional Solicitor General Rajkumar Bhaskar Thakre, who represented the Centre and Maharashtra Government.

The Bench — which also included Justice Joymalya Bagchi — said if existing courts were designated as special courts for trials under the NIA Act, cases of undertrials languishing in jail for years, senior citizens, people from marginalised sections and matrimonial disputes would be delayed.

Highlighting the need of the hour to be the creation of more infrastructures, appointment of judges and staff and the government sanctioning the posts, it gave the Centre and the Maharashtra government a last opportunity to formulate a proper proposal for setting up of special courts under special statutes such as the NIA, MCOCA and UAPA among other sand. It gave them four weeks to respond.

While hearing a bail plea of Kailash Ramchandani, a Naxal sympathiser from Gadchiroli in Maharashtra booked for the death of 15 policemen of a quick response team in an IED blast in 2019, the top court had highlighted the need for dedicated courts for NIA cases while calling for a “judicial audit" of laws enacted by the Centre and the prospective ones by the states.

The cases entrusted to the NIA were heinous cases, having pan India ramifications and each such case contained hundreds of witnesses and the trial did not progress with the required pace as the presiding officers of the court were busy with other cases, it noted.

The only appropriate course meant setting up special courts where trial of cases only related to special statutes could be carried out with a day-to-day hearing, it said.

India