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| Vigilante justice: SC terms it as "alarming state of affairs" | | | NewDelhi | Sep 24
Describing recent instances of vigilante justice as an "alarming state of affairs", the Supreme Court has asked courts to expeditiously dispose off cases lest people lose their confidence in the judiciary.
A bench of Justices A K Mathur and Markandeya Katju said such incidents of mob violence often arise out of frustration over endless litigations in various courts.
"We saw in the media news of lynching of suspected theives in Bihar's Vaishali district, the gunning down of an undertrial prisoner outside Patna city civil court and other incidents where people have taken the law into their own hands. This is obviously because many people have started thinking that justice will not be done in the courts due to the delays in court proceedings," the apex court observed.
The Judges made the observations while directing equal distribution of a property between two contending parties who were litigating on the issue for over 60 years.
One Moses William, the petitioner, and Kasturiba, the respondent, have been fighting a civil suit since 1947 in Tamil Nadu's Kanyakumari district over a property that was valued at Rs 7,000 at that time.
But even 60 years after the filing of the suit, the dispute remained undecided in the courts and one of the parties has approached the Supreme Court now.
Noting that the proceedings had been hovering for over 60 years, the Judges with the consent of the counsel ruled that the entire property which is the subject of dispute "may be divided in equal shares between the two parties".
The apex court asked the District Judge, Kanyakumari, or any of the additional district judge appointed by him to divide the property between the disputing parties.
However, the court granted liberty to the parties to approach it, if they feel aggrieved by any order passed by the district judge while facilitating the partition.
The bench felt that only through such partition the long drawn legal battle could be ended.
Earlier too, in a similar property dispute that was litigated for over 50 years, the apex court had warned that people would lose faith in the judiciary if cases are not disposed off in a time-bound manner.
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