Supreme Court acquits man in jail for 22 years for wrong conviction
NEW DELHI: A trial court’s failure to evaluate the evidence properly and the Odisha High Court remaining a mute spectator resulted in 22 years being erased from a person’s life as he was wrongly convicted and his appeal was not heard by the high court. Finally, the Supreme Court has come to his rescue and acquitted him.
It is a classic case where a poor litigant’s fight for justice is frustrated at the altar of the judiciary itself, when the court refused hearing on technical grounds. The poor convict had already spent 12 years in jail when he approached the high court. The high court refused to hear him on the technical ground that there was a delay in filing an appeal, and it prolonged his stay in jail by 10 more years before he was acquitted by the Supreme Court, which had to admit that “access to justice still eludes the marginalised sections of our society and especially those convicted and imprisoned from among them”.
It is a classic case where a poor litigant’s fight for justice is frustrated at the altar of the judiciary itself, when the court refused hearing on technical grounds. The poor convict had already spent 12 years in jail when he approached the high court. The high court refused to hear him on the technical ground that there was a delay in filing an appeal, and it prolonged his stay in jail by 10 more years before he was acquitted by the Supreme Court, which had to admit that “access to justice still eludes the marginalised sections of our society and especially those convicted and imprisoned from among them”.
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