Bhubaneswar: Odisha has been grappling with poor conviction rate for the past few years despite efforts to address the problem. The Supreme Court in a 2014 judgment (State of Gujarat versus Kishanbhai) remarked that “every acquittal should be understood as a failure of the justice delivery system, in serving the cause of justice.”
The apex court also asserted that every acquittal should infer that ‘an innocent person has been wrongfully prosecuted’.
Apart from a slew of measures, the apex court directed the states to take stringent action against the errant investigating officers, if found guilty of lapses in probe process. Accordingly, the state police have taken several measures to better its performance in enhancing conviction rate, especially in heinous crimes.
However, the recently released 2018 crime statistics by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has stated that the state police efforts are yet to yield any satisfactory result in this regard.
As per the NCRB report, 66758 cases under various sections of IPC crimes like murder, rape and human trafficking were sent to courts for trial in 2018. Meanwhile, trials were found to be pending in 5,17,709 cases from previous years. The courts completed trial in 21,227 cases out of 5,84,467 in 2018.
Interestingly, 1,207 cases in which trial was initiated in 2018 ended in conviction while the accused were acquitted in 20,020 cases. The rate of conviction stood at 5.7 per cent as compared to 9.3 per cent under IPC crime head in 2017.
The decline in conviction rate in 2018 is worrying in cases related to various SLL (special and local laws) sections like gambling, NDPS (Narcotoc Drugs and Psychotropic Substances) Act and cyber crime related acts. The report revealed 136 cases led to conviction out of 12,741 in which trials were completed in 2018. The conviction rate under SLL crimes count dropped to 1.1 from 12.5 per cent in the previous year.
Similarly, 77 cases ended with conviction out of a total 10731 (trial pending in 2080 from previous year and 2721 added in 2018) number of cases related to crimes against children in 2018. The courts completed trial in 912 cases while the accused were acquitted of crimes against children in 835 cases in 2018. The rate of conviction in such cases was 8.4 per cent in 2018 as against the conviction rate of 9.8 in 2017.
The state recorded conviction rate of mere 3 and 5.1 percent in cases related to crimes against scheduled caste and tribe respectively. Meanwhile, no cases related to atrocities on senior citizens witnessed the completion of trial during 2018.
The state witnessed a rise in conviction rate in matters of crime against women in 2018. About 462 cases ended in conviction out of 5,595 cases in which trials were completed in 2018. The rate of conviction was 8.3% in comparison to 7.4% in 2017 and 6.2% in 2016.
Worse still, Odisha also lagged behind other states in convictions during 2018.
Similarly, the courts were seen taking almost one year to five years to complete trial in all kinds of criminal cases. The state crime branch recently introduced a specialised unit, Crime Analysis Wing (CAW), with experts from the branch, to help the officers in the investigating process.