Executive Summary
India has 5 Cr pending court cases [1] and more are getting added every day. This issue has been highlighted by our Prime Minister [2] and Chief Justice of India [3] multiple times. To take India to a faster growth path, trust in the justice system is necessary. The average time to dispose of a case takes around 13.5 years [4] with cases going as long as 40 years [5]. The time for a civil case to reach finality is even higher. International data shows, that in developed countries, 90% of cases get eliminated before trial begins with plea bargaining, and the balance cases get resolved in months. [6] Similarly, 90% civil cases settle before trial due to strong perjury and disclosure laws.
In India, because we turn a blind eye to perjury, trivialise it and treat it as a petty offence, the conviction rates (imprisonment) crash to 1% as no one pleads guilty. Every year, 70 lac people are charge sheeted [7] but still the total number of convicted prisoners in jail stands at only 1.5 lacs today [8]. The plea-bargaining law introduced in India in 2005 has failed because accused do not prefer to reduce sentences via plea bargaining (0.11%) when they can easily keep lying till they get away for free, or make the victim succumb to the reality of the Indian justice system and settle or lose hope.
Due to the ineffective plea bargaining, compared to developed countries, in India about 15 times more cases have to go through trial and are held up in the court till they get acquitted by lying, witness tampering, and employing various obstructions as presently provided under the law or rather licensed under Section 215 of BNSS (earlier CrPC 195).
This is the way of life in Indian courts where the crores of victims (and their families) are left further tormented and remediless by manipulations of the law through endless perjury because they do not have a right to be a complainant under this unique colonial law inherited by India and its 3 neighbours but it never existed in the colonial countries themselves.
In spite of 100s of precedents and warnings by SC and HC judges, the government fears that removing this restriction will result in an avalanche of cases and will destroy whatever is left of the justice system. Secondly, in countries like India people will more likely abuse it like 498a to file false cases and intimidate witnesses. Thirdly, we may not have sufficient jails because the perjury is rampant.
Perjury by nature is different from false 498a or rape cases because it has documentary evidence and a different privacy context. Like all other crimes, perjury or false evidence is only admitted if prima facie evidence exists, unlike the false 498a and rape cases. In fact, introduction of stringent perjury law will rather prevent the false cases being filed including also under section 498a.
The answer eventually lies in the Deterrence theory of jurisprudence and the riddle “If you have 10 flies sitting and you catch one, how many are left? Zero.” This is how the crime rate in Uttar Pradesh was brought down.
Thus, there is an urgent strategic need for a policy intervention such that-
India enforces severest of penalties, swiftly and without any leniency whatsoever, even on a slightest of lies in courts, on each and every person who helped promote it, knowingly or even recklessly, such that, pleading guilty becomes the preferred option rather than colluding with others to create a web of lies.
Therefore, with the above policy objective in mind Team Satyug has proposed Anti-Perjury (Satyug) Bill.
[1] National Judicial Data Grid
[4] Supreme Court: Why India's powerful top court is in a 'crisis', https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66292895
[5] Supreme Court expresses alarm at criminal appeals pending in high courts for decades, https://www.indiatoday.in/law/story/supreme-court-expresses-alarm-criminal-appeals-pending-high-courts-1945489-2022-05-04; 'Trial Took 40 Years!', https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/trial-took-40-years-supreme-court-grants-bail-to-75-year-old-rape-murder-convict-asks-hc-to-hear-his-appeal-on-priority-238699
[6] Plea bargaining procedures worldwide: Drivers of introduction and use, ILE Working Paper Series, No. 75
[7] Crimes in India, National Crime Records Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs
[8] World Prison Brief
