For substantial justice, ignore delay in state appeal: apex court

Legal Correspondent

What counts is not length of delay but sufficiency of cause

New Delhi: Criticising the Delhi High Court for rejecting an appeal against discharge of an alleged terrorist in a criminal case at the threshold on account of delay, the Supreme Court has held that in the larger public interest courts can condone the delay in the state filing appeals.

“There is no presumption that delay is occasioned deliberately, or on account of culpable negligence, or on account of mala fides. When substantial justice and technical considerations are pitted against each other, the cause of substantial justice deserves to be preferred,” said a Bench consisting of Justices Arijit Pasayat and Mukundakam Sharma.

Directing the High Court to hear the appeal afresh on its merits, the Bench said: “Experience shows that on account of an impersonal machinery [no one in charge of the matter is directly hit or hurt by the judgment sought to be subjected to appeal] and the inherited bureaucratic methodology imbued with the note-making, file-pushing, and passing-the-buck ethos, delay on its part is less difficult to understand though more difficult to approve.”

Writing the judgment, Justice Pasayat said: “The state, which represents collective cause of the community, does not deserve a litigant-non grata status. The judiciary is respected not on account of its power to legalise injustice on technical grounds but because it is capable of removing injustice and is expected to do so.”

In the instant case, the High Court quashed a revision application against the discharge of the accused, Ahmad Jaan, by the additional sessions judge in a case of his alleged terrorist activities for the Jammu and Kashmir-based Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen in October 1998. The Delhi government preferred an appeal against the trial court order after six years and it was dismissed on grounds of delay. Allowing the government’s appeal against this order, the apex court said: “What counts is not the length of the delay but the sufficiency of the cause. One cannot but take a practical view of the working of the government without being unduly indulgent to the slow motion of its wheels.”