Maharashtra Shakti law: Experts warn that amendments could delay justice

From perjury to compensation for wrongful arrest are few suggestions made by lawyerswomenrsquos groups to the state assemblyrsquos public notice dated January 2 for the proposed Maharashtra Shakti Criminal Law But senior legal brains have a word of caution saying such amendments should not be done with political intent or affect pendency of other cases as they might adversely impact the judicial process and delay the justice delivery system furtherRohini Salian advocateThe legal experts were referring to the 29 amendments that were signed by the state government in 2018 and sent to the assembly for approval They also said that such amendments must synchronise with changes made to relevant criminal laws in other states for uniform applicabilityIn response to the public notice about the proposed law the state government received 46 suggestions from womenrsquos and lawyersrsquo groups across Mumbai and these have been put before the stateappointed committee ldquoThe committee will meet on January 30 at Aurangabad and lawyerswomen group can submit any suggestions to itrdquo said a Mantralaya officialDinesh Tiwari senior criminal lawyerAdvocate Rajeshwar Panchal seeks amendment in sections 250 Compensation for accusation without reasonable cause and 195 Prosecution for contempt of lawful authority of public servants for offences against public justice and for offences relating to documents given in evidence of the Criminal Procedure CodeHe explained ldquoSection 250 of CrPC empowers only the court of the Magistrate to grant compensation to the accused after the trial and upon his satisfaction that the accused was wrongly prosecuted or falsely implicated However this power has a rider A magistrate canrsquot exceed his pecuniary limit in imposing fine Thus this provision needs to be amendedrdquoPanchal also said there is a need to suitably amend section 195 of CrPC to enable a victim of false prosecution or false evidence etc legally called offence of perjury to have access to justice against the one who commits it This is needed because in the existing mechanism it is only the court before whom perjury has been proved which can lodge a complaint against its perpetratorrdquo lsquoRarely make amendmentsrsquoAdvocate Rohini Salian former Chief Public Prosecutor who was part of the stateappointed committee to strength the Maharashtra Shakti Criminal Law Maharashtra Amendment Act 2020 said ldquoI am of the view that amendments to acts whether they fall in the union state or concurrent list should be rarely done and not with the intent of getting political mileage Such amendments need to be done after considering pros and cons post discussion with all the stakeholders mdash judiciary legislative police mdash and experts An amendment should be proposed if it can easily be adapted by other statesrdquoShe cited an example of an earlier amendment to IPC CrPC and the Indian Evidence Act in the initial days of Indiarsquos transformation from nondigital to digital introducing the words lsquoelectronic documentrsquo in the definition of word documents in criminal acts The amendment also gave more power to the Information Technology Act to take action against cyber offenders and other criminalsSenior criminal lawyer Dinesh Tiwari said ldquoAmendment after amendment in acts which have been prevailing since British era without required infrastructure and additional helping hands only derail the criminal justice process and delay justice to the common man Instead of cosmetic changes in criminal laws the real problem must be resolved by setting up technojudicial infrastructure across the staterdquoldquoAfter 73 years of Independence Mumbai has witnessed an increase in civilcriminal litigations but has only one additional Sessions Court at Dindoshi More courts and more judges are needed to expedite cases With amendments to rape laws in order to fast track sexual assault cases and for the verdict to be passed within a year courts will focus on the same But pendency of other cases should not be ignoredrdquo said Tiwari