A nearly four-decade-old pending case about five police constables in Uttar Pradesh who brawled over the favours of their canteen cook has led the Supreme Court to uphold the right to speedy trial as a human right, besides directing a sweeping enquiry into the backlog, judicial vacancies and bail pleas languishing in trial courts across the most populous State in India.

The case of ‘simple hurt’ was registered against the policemen who were on Kumbh Mela duty in 1989. Four of them had engaged in a verbal altercation with the fifth, saying the cook had brought him better food. The verbal duel had quickly spiralled into an exchange of blows, and all of them ended up facing criminal charges.

The trial was shifted to a Magistrate court in Allahabad in 1991, where it remained pending, oblivious to the world changing around it.

During the 35 years of pending trial, two of the accused died, the State of Uttar Pradesh itself got bifurcated in November 2000 and the Magistrate, finally losing patience with the prosecution for not producing a single witness for over three decades, acquitted two other accused in 2023.

The case against the appellant, who was the fifth policeman, was, however, kept alive. The Allahabad High Court refused to quash the case against him.

Appearing before a Bench headed by Justice J.B. Pardiwala, Kailash Chandra Kapri, the policeman in question, represented by advocate Shashwat Anand, said he was 22 years old when the FIR was registered in 1989, and he was 59 now. He said he had no summons from the court till 2021. He urged the court to let him off, arguing that his right to speedy trial had been violated.

Agreeing with him, Justice Pardiwala concluded that the right to speedy trial was a part of the fundamental right to life and an essential facet of fair trial, which was a human right.

“The tag of ‘accused’ deprives a man of the right to live with full human dignity… Speedy trial is an integral part of a fair trial. Therefore, we are of the view that the right to speedy trial is also a human right and no civilised society can deny the same to an accused,” Justice Pardiwala said in a recent judgment.

The court said that a prolonged delay in trial, even in a terror case, necessitated the grant of bail.

‘Too long a time’

“In this case, there is enormous delay in proceeding with the criminal prosecution — 35 years for a trial for simple hurt and criminal intimidation is too long a time,” Justice Pardiwala observed.

Noting that the right to speedy trial should not remain as an “abstract or illusory safeguard”, the apex court directed the Allahabad High Court to file a status report on the number of pending cases in Judicial Magistrate and Sessions Courts in Uttar Pradesh; the number of undertrial prisoners behind bars and details of cases in which they have spent from one year to over 10 years in custody without bail; the number of judicial vacancies in the lower courts; and details and statistics of pending bail applications.

The apex court has sought specific details about the status of the criminal cases pending in Uttar Pradesh, and the “impediments coming in the way of different courts in proceeding further with these cases”.

The case was scheduled for hearing the status report of the High Court on July 13, 2026.