Canadian Parvasi Issue 29 November 2019

The International News Weekly November 29, 2019 | Toronto 10
Fast track? In Bihar, 1 in 3 cases
took over 10 years to clear
AI pilot told to remove turban, get
pat-down at Madrid airport
Continued on page 04
It is learnt that Captain Gujral had faced a similar situation over a year back. He had spoken
to Sirsa after the first incident, who had asked him to contact him if he ever faced such a situation
again. Even when the metal detector did not beep, the security official told the pilot that he
wanted to carry out a turban pat-down or pass the headgear through the scanner. Gujral refused
to agree to both things. The security official even called the police but Gujral stood firm and spoke
to Air India’s airport manager at Madrid. He then called up Sirsa at around 1 am, who asked him
to stand his ground.When Gujral tried another terminal, he could clear the security check by
passing through the metal detector. In his letter to the external affairs minister on Wednesday,
DSGMC president Sirsa said the incident was a clear case of racial discrimination because of turban.
He urged the minister to raise the issue with the Spain government and to create awareness
globally so that Sikhs do not face such trouble at airports abroad.
Fast-track courts were set
up to deliver justice quickly.
Data, however, shows that they
have not quite lived up to their
reputation, sometimes taking
decades to give a judgment.
In Bihar, over a third of cases
referred to fast-track courts
(FTC) took more than 10 years
to clear.
Among other big states,
Telangana had the secondworst
record, with such courts
taking more than 10 years to
clear roughly 12% of the cases,
according to the recently released
National Crime Records
Bureau (NCRB) data for 2017.
These courts were set up in
2000 to clear the huge backlog
of cases in sessions and other
judicial courts.
In states like Meghalaya, of
the total 18 cases that were finally
cleared by FTCs, 10 took
more than a decade to complete.
Similarly in Nagaland, of the 17
cases, eight took more than 10
years to resolve.
In 2017, for India as a whole,
about 30% of the cases were resolved
in a year, another 30%
took 1-3 years and the rest took
more than 3 years for the courts
to pronounce verdict.
The top performers were
Jammu & Kashmir, where 89%
of cases were cleared within a
year. Madhya Pradesh (74.2%),
Tamil Nadu (65.6%) and Karnataka
(62.3%) performed well,
too.
If one looks at the national
picture, lower courts cleared
47% of the cases within a year,
better than the strike rate of
FTCs.
Here one needs to keep
in mind that unlike district
courts, fast-track courts in
many cities deal only with serious
offences and cases that
involve women, children and
senior citizens.
Recently, Union law minister
Ravi Shankar Prasad, in a
written reply to a question in
the Lok Sabha, said that as of
March 31, 2019, around 6 lakh
cases were pending in FTCs
throughout the country.
Uttar Pradesh had around
4.25 lakh pending cases in 206
courts though the state had disposed
of 4.5 lakh cases in 2017
and 2018. Maharashtra came a
distant second with 79,436 cases
pending in 77 FTCs. Indiahas a
total of 581 FTCs.
One of the main reasons for
delay in disposal of cases in
these courts has been the high
number of vacancies.
In order to speed up the process,
the government is planning
to set up around 1,000
FTCs for which the states and
the Centre will allocate around
Rs 700 crore.