THE INDIAN JUDICIAL SYSTEM IS FAMOUS for its slow pace. The crawling of cases - with it the lives of millions involved - has been the subject matter of numerous films, caricatures in media and commentary in the runaway world of social media. There are over 50 million pending cases across district and High courts. It is almost double the count of the official disabled population in the country.
The first inaccessibility faced by disabled in Indian courts is the duration of court cases. A person with disability would, on average, be short on time compared to a normal bodied person. The remedy may come too late, physical deterioration may warrant early judicial intervention, a disabled accused awaiting sentence may simply be rotting away in prison. The disabled quest for justice can be broadly compared to a litigant with a serious medical condition.
For millions of disabled Indians, justice is inaccessible not only in time but also in understanding — physical, intellectual, and legislative. We can talk about physical inaccessibility to courts infrastructure but that is a universal feature across the Indian landscape. So let us not dwell on it. Intellectual inaccessibility is the biggest obstacle the disabled face in Indian courts. District courts – where over 90 percent of pending cases are stuck – seldom have sufficient knowledge of disability laws to decide cases involving disabled litigants. However, it must be said that in a majority of cases, provision of disability laws may not kick in. Judicial officers simply need to decide on civil or criminal matters.
