'A lifelong nightmare': Seeking justice in India's overwhelmed courts

As the gunmen burst into the village of lower-caste Indians, fanning out through the dirt roads and throwing open the doors of the mud houses, Binod Paswan jumped into a grain silo and peered out in horror.

Within hours, witnesses say, upper-caste landlords massacred 58 Dalits, people once known as “untouchables,” most of them agricultural laborers in the eastern state of Bihar who had agitated for higher wages. Seven of them were members of Mr Paswan's family.

The next day he filed a complaint with the police, and investigators soon filed charges. That was 26 years ago. He is still waiting – after contradictory statements and hundreds of court hearings, during which some witnesses are now dead or have impaired vision – for a solution.

“A cry for justice turned into a lifelong nightmare for us,” says 45-year-old Paswan.

In a vast country with no shortage of intractable problems, it is one of the longest-standing and most far-reaching problems: India's staggeringly overburdened justice system.

The country's economy is growing rapidly, technology is reshaping the lives of more than a billion people and national leaders are striving for global power, but India appears to have few answers to the ever-growing backlogs in the courts that are robbing citizens of their rights and disrupting business hinder activities.

There are more than 50 million cases in treatment throughout the country, according to the National Judicial Data Grid – an accumulation that has doubled in the past twenty years. At the current rate, it would take more than 300 years to clean up India's role.

There are many reasons for the backlogs. India has one of the lowest judge-to-population ratios in the world 21 per million people, compared to about 150 in the United States. For decades, Indian leaders and courts have set themselves the goal 50 judges per million people. But there have been no significant funding increases to hire more judges, improve court facilities and digitize proceedings as officials consider other priorities more important.

A rigid system with archaic rules, inherited from the British, also slows down the process. Lawyers conduct endless pleadings and long written submissions. Little has changed, even as government committees have recommended an end to the manual recording of testimonies and the time-consuming procedures of questioning witnesses.

Delays are endemic in both criminal and civil cases. About 77 per cent of prisoners in India awaiting trial, compared to one in three worldwide. Of the more than eleven million pending civil cases, most of which concern disputes over land or other property, almost a quarter are at least five years old.

The countries longest-running legal dispute – a bank liquidation case – was settled last January after 72 years. In June there was a 90-year-old man given life in prison for his involvement in a 42-year-old case.

“What do we do to solve the problem? Frankly, nothing,” Madan Lokur, a former Supreme Court judge, said in a recent interview.

“How long will it take for a decision to be made in your case?” he added. “If you're lucky, maybe in your lifetime.”

Judges hear dozens of cases every day, many of them nuisance reports by the government or citizens. Quick hearings lead to delays – and the backlog is growing.

The Indian government appears to have a direct interest in easing the delays: it is the country's largest litigator, accounting for nearly 50 percent of pending cases.

But successive governments have used the vulnerability of the courts as a political weapon. Fighting between the judiciary and the executive over judicial appointments has reached new heights under the country's current leader, Narendra Modi, who critics say has largely intimidated the courts as he consolidates power within India's institutions.

The Supreme Court remains a last resort for justice, but the justices are often bogged down by less consequential cases such as marital or property disputes. When they do rule, the judges are increasingly seen to favor the government, which has handed out pension benefits to lawyers who appear to be toeing the line, experts say.

And while politicians and opposition activists accused of crimes often spend years in legal limbo, government supporters facing the same issues can more easily get bail.

The glacial pace of India's judiciary was clearly visible one recent morning in Mathura, a city in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

Hundreds of prosecutors and defendants wandered aimlessly through the busy hallways of the courthouse, while lawyers with papers under their arms sipped hot milk and ginger tea.

In one corner, a lawyer and police officers joked with a milkman accused more than a decade ago of selling counterfeit products. The inspector who initiated the case never appeared in court and was transferred out of the city. The milkman Mahender, who uses one name, has appeared at dozens of hearings anyway. The judge calls his name, the suspect raises his hand, the inspector and a witness are absent and another hearing date is assigned.

Even attorneys who become plaintiffs can have difficulty navigating the system.

In 1999, an Indian Railways ticket officer overcharged Tungnath Chaturvedi, a lawyer at the Mathura court, by 25 cents. Mr Chaturvedi, 67, said he filed a case not because of the money but because of the officer's attitude.

It took him 120 hearings over 23 years before he received a verdict. Last year, a consumer court ordered the railroad to pay a fine of about $188, as well as the outstanding amount of 25 cents, plus 12 percent interest. Still, Indian Railways approached the highest court in Uttar Pradesh and reduced the fine to $80.

“When I filed the case, I went up and down the five floors of the court every day to attend hearings,” Mr Chaturvedi said. “When the judge ruled in my case, I couldn't walk from my house to the court because of arthritis. And I was already retired. That is the story of the Indian judiciary.”

Many cases are far more serious than a small additional charge, and the toll on those waiting for justice is far greater.

In June 1997, Neelam Krishnamoorthy lost her two children, aged 17 and 13, in a fire at a cinema in New Delhi, killing 59 people.

Her fight to get justice inspired a Netflix series and countless newspaper articles. Her activism led to improved fire safety measures in shopping centers and theaters.

Ten years after the fire, sixteen men, including the cinema owners, staff and safety inspectors, were found guilty of negligence. Four of the men were already dead.

The two brothers who owned the theater, both powerful real estate barons, were jailed for two years, a sentence that Ms. Krishnamoorthy appealed to the Supreme Court. It only ruled in 2015, waiving the sentence and instead fining the brothers; Ms Krishnamoorthy appealed again.

She continues to go around the court and now accuses the brothers of tampering with evidence.

“If I had known that it would take more than 20 years to get even a minimum of justice, I don't think I would have gone to court,” Ms. Krishnamoorthy said. “I would have grabbed a gun and shot the perpetrators; At least then I would have had a sense of justice.”

Justice has also been elusive for the victims of the 1997 village massacre in Bihar. In 2010, a court found 26 people guilty, sixteen of whom received the death penalty and the others life imprisonment. The men challenged the verdict in a higher court, and two years later the verdict was challenged due to lack of evidence acquitted all 26 defendants.

Mr Paswan, along with several other eyewitnesses, appealed to the Supreme Court in 2014. The case has been in court nine times, but Mr Paswan has no idea what is going on.

Days after the massacre, Dalit leaders erected a red-brick memorial just outside his home. The names and ages of the 58 people who died are engraved in Hindi. The dead included twenty-seven women – eight of them pregnant – and sixteen children.

“When I look at this monument, I hear people's cries for help,” Mr Paswan said. “It also serves as a constant reminder of the injustice done to people from lower castes by the courts of this country.”