Infrastructural, administrative deficiencies main reason for delayed criminal trials: Report in Supreme Court

A report filed before the Supreme Court on Tuesday has found that since the Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) came into force in 2024, over 13,600 criminal cases across India have been pending for more than 6 months at the pre-trial stage with charges yet to be framed against the accused..Interestingly, the report found that the delays were caused more by infrastructural and administrative deficiencies rather than judicial workload. "Several States with comparatively high pendency also reflected disproportionately high figures of incomplete or illegible data. This indicates that weaknesses in record management, digitisation, standardisation of data maintenance, and transmission of procedural information directly affect institutional monitoring and delay reduction mechanisms," it stated..The report was prepared by amici curiae Senior Advocates Sidharth Luthra and S Nagamuthu with the assistance of Advocate DL Chidananda. It is the first national empirical mapping of charge-framing delay under the BNSS..The top court had earlier taken note of clause (b) of sub-section (1) of Section 251 of the BNSS, which mandates that charges be framed within 60 days of the first hearing. The Court had observed that in a large number of cases, there was huge delay in framing of charges, leading to delay in trial. It said that pan-India directions were required to remedy the situation and appointed the two senior counsel as amici curiae to assist it.A subsequent order dated November 21, 2025, directed the Chief Justices of all High Courts to constitute committees to furnish granular, stage-wise case data..The report analyses sessions court data from 26 states (1,46,404 cases) and magistrate court data from 23 states (2,83,031 cases).In sessions courts, 10,002 cases have seen delay exceeding 6 months and 15,203 cases have crossed the 60-day statutory period without charges being framed. A further 24,185 cases remain stuck at the summons or document-supply stage and 19,819 at the committal stage, meaning nearly 30% of the sessions court caseload is trapped before trial even commences..In magistrate courts, 3,689 cases are more than 6 months old and 4,952 remain non-compliant beyond the 60-day mark. An additional 1,07,051 cases (37.82%) are still pending at the summons stage. Over 60,000 magistrate court cases could not be analysed at all because the data furnished was illegible, incomplete or contained typographical errors..Madhya Pradesh records the highest number of sessions court cases beyond the 6-month mark at 2,219, followed by Uttar Pradesh with 2,014 such cases and a further 3,563 cases where charges were not framed within the 60-day period.In Telangana, approximately 71% of sessions court cases are stuck before trial commences. Maharashtra shows 4,202 sessions court cases pending at the committal stage alone..Sessions court data from Haryana and both sessions and magistrate data from Punjab and Bihar remain unanalysed. Notably, Bihar is the respondent in the appeal that prompted this exercise. Magistrate court data from Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, and Rajasthan is also pending analysis..The reasons attributed to the delays include adjournments sought by prosecution or defence, transfer or absence of judicial officers, vacant courts, non-production or absence of accused persons, absconding accused, delay in receipt of forensic reports, large number of accused, pendency of administrative work etc..The amici have now recommended that High Courts should use their powers to take periodic updates from trial courts.They have called for strict enforcement of the 14-day document supply deadline under Section 230 BNSS, completion of committal proceedings within 90 days under Section 232 and strict curbs on adjournments under Section 346.The report has urged the Union and State governments to meet their constitutional obligation to strengthen the judiciary through adequate funding, manpower and infrastructure..The case before a Bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and NV Anjaria is a bail application filed by one Aman Kumar, who in jail as an undertrial since August 2024 on allegations of robbery and attempt to murder.The police had filed its chargesheet in the case on September 30, 2024.In his bail plea, Kumar had argued that he was falsely implicated in the case. He added that the police implicated him based on inadmissible statements..The Bench had remarked that such a state of affairs cannot continue and that charges must be framed as soon as the chargesheet or final investigation report is filed by the police. Therefore, the Court proposed to issue pan-India guidelines on this issue.