This is a case of the wheels of justice turning slowly and not grinding exceedingly fine. After 44 years, the Allahabad High Court has finally given relief to a 100-year-old man, who for over four decades was unsure what his fate would be because of a murder charge levelled against him and others over a land dispute.

Dhani Ram, nearing 100, was arrested back in 1982. He was accused of being involved in the murder of a man over a land dispute in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh. He was released on bail a few months later, but the legal battle continued for the next four decades.

The court has now passed an order, acquitting him of the charges of murder and discharging his bail bond. “When a person stands before the court at the twilight of existence, the insistence on penal consequences, after decades of procedural delay, risks transforming justice into a ritual divorced from the purpose it intends,” the court ruled.

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“When the system itself has been unable to deliver finality within a reasonable time, courts are justified in adopting a tempered, human approach while fashioning relief," it added.

The judges were also critical of the prosecution’s failure to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt. It also referred to the anxiety and social consequences that the accused underwent over 40 years.

“Justice is not an abstraction divorced from human conditions,” the court said. “The law cannot be oblivious to the reality that advancing age brings with its physical fragility, dependence and a narrowing horizon of life.” According to the judges a criminal process stretching across generations “ceases to be only a mechanism of accountability and assumes, in itself, the character of punishment.”

Court cases in India drag on for decades, and many of the accused suffer, either in jail or on bail. The Allahabad High Court, one of the oldest in the country, has nearly a million cases pending. Last year, some lawyers in Allahabad (now known as Prayagraj) demanded more judicial appointments, including judges, as the court was ‘paralysed’ because of a lack of judges.

The Indian Supreme Court had also expressed concerns about the Allahabad High Court, describing it as ‘worrisome’ as the system had collapsed there.

Allahabad High Court

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