After 29 yrs of trial, 2 get 5 yrs in jail for stealing Rs 370

  • | Tuesday | 18th July, 2017

Bareilly: It's taken 29 years of snail-paced trial for a court in Bareilly to sentence two men to five years in prison for stealing Rs 370 from a man they drugged in train sometime in 1988. They now say the real punishment for them was the trial and not the jail term they have been given now. The court of additional district and sessions judge Sarla Dutta in Bareilly has in its order on Tuesday also fined the accused Rs 10,000 each. The apex court has also written to chief justices to speed up filling up of vacancies in HCs to bring down pendency. It had emphasised on disposing of all cases older than five years on priority.

Bareilly: It's taken 29 years of snail-paced trial for a court in Bareilly to sentence two men to five years in prison for stealing Rs 370 from a man they drugged in train sometime in 1988. The court of additional district and sessions judge Sarla Dutta in Bareilly has in its order on Tuesday also fined the accused Rs 10,000 each. A third accused died in 2004.On October 21, 1988, Chandra Pal, Kanhaiya Lal and Sarvesh had offered Wajid Husain, who was 30 then and is almost 59 now, tea laced with drugs as he was travelling in train from Shahjahanpur to Punjab for a job. They had then taken away the Rs 370 that Husain had in his suitcase.Talking about the case, additional district government counsel (ADGC) Suresh Babu Sahu said, “An FIR was lodged against three people – Chandra Pal, Kanhaiya Lal and Sarvesh – under IPC sections 379 (theft), 328 (causing hurt by means of poison) and 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property) at GRP station at Bareilly in 1988. In 2004, it came to light that Pal had died. Then the case was transferred to the court of the additional district and sessions judge against Kanhaiya Lal and Sarvesh.” Pal, who remained absconding for 16 long years, held up trial at the court of a railway magistrate all that while, Sahu added.Husain, who is 59 years old now and works as a labourer in Bihar, last came to the court in 2012 to depose against the accused. The two surviving accused, Lal and Sarvesh, who are now in their sixties and have grown-up sons and daughters in their native village in Hardoi, UP, regret the “gross mistake” they committed back then due to what they termed “inconsequence of youth”. They now say the real punishment for them was the trial and not the jail term they have been given now. "The closure is a cause of happiness," Sarvesh said.According to law ministry data, there are more than 2.8 crore cases pending in lower courts of the country and 38.7 lakh cases in high courts across India. One of the key reasons for the huge figure of pending litigation is the shortage of judges in subordinate courts as there are 4,954 judges’ posts vacant when the sanctioned strength of judicial officers is 21,324.A report on subordinate judiciary has said that district courts in UP have 58.8 lakh cases, including 43.73 lakh criminal cases, pending. Maharashtra has the second highest tally with a backlog of 31.8 lakh cases, followed by West Bengal at 26.95 lakh, Bihar at 20.88 lakh and Gujarat at 20.56 lakh.Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had recently written to all chief ministers seeking their cooperation in filling up vacancies in subordinate courts. The apex court has also written to chief justices to speed up filling up of vacancies in HCs to bring down pendency. It had emphasised on disposing of all cases older than five years on priority.

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