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Access to Criminal justice

Strategies to Strengthen Capacity of Criminal Justice Framework in India
Justice means the sense of being just and fair providing one what one deserve at the real time and at the utmost need. In this research paper venturing into the arena of different authentic sources, in order to prove the hypothesis by employing landmark judgments, so that a better understanding can be established with reference to the opinions of judges about the matter which is in issue.

In order to understand the concept better, using law commission reports and expert opinions, so that the strategies to strengthen the access to criminal justice would become firm. Apart from that this research paper has tried to employed interviews of people, who had faced difficulty in access to criminal justice and by taking into consideration our constitutional assembly debates we have tried to put life in the dead letters of our laws, so that instead calling it empty formality we may call it our mechanism of law as effective as it has to be.

By taking into consideration the societal views we have considered the authentic surveys and then concluding all these by assimilating and integrating with respect to providing solutions to strengthen the access to criminal justice system this research paper will provide effective means of access to justice.

Justice delay is justice denied is old saying but still has relevance cause India is at the stalemate where only better ideas could be able to help to ferret out the problem. More than this this research paper as per the effective mechanism which India has sought for since long time, after applying the new mechanism India can come out from the bereft of access to justice towards bright world where everyone can have access to criminal as well as civil justice.

Introduction
Access to justice has been recognized as a valuable right by courts in this country long before the commencement of the Constitution.

Reference in this regard may be made to Re:
To no man will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right to justice.
In a developing country like India it is farcically impossible to provide proper justice to every one along with the system which focused much on the procedure rather believe in justice but howsoever bad the situation might be if there is an efficient enforcement agencies who held them responsible for their failure then problem related to access to justice may be fixed.

In India the client-centric approach of the contemporary lawyers has blurred the boundary between law and other disciplines. The impact of the continuing globalization of business, finance and commerce has brought into focus the need for the courageous lawyers with the highest ethical standards I hold the view that the responsibility of the legal profession towards the public at large is even greater now.

Society creates the circumstances criminals merely commits them There can be no dispute that access to speedy justice is part of fundamental right under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution. The National Commission to Review Working of the Constitution recommended that access to speedy justice may be incorporated as an express fundamental right.

My research is based on a hypothesis that whether we have to make an extra efforts to strengthen the access to justice or we have to improve the existing traditional failed system of access to criminal justice system. This research is mixture of doctrinal as well as non-doctrinal study in order to understand the concept of access to justice so that the lacuna's present in the system can be replaced with better finding solutions. The concept of access to justice as an invaluable human right, also recognized in most constitutional democracies as a fundamental right, has its origin in common law as much as in the Magna Carta.

Access To Justice

The court in the case of Anita Kushwaha v/s Pushap Sudan[1] has held that access to Justice is a Fundamental Right guaranteed to citizens by Article 14 and Article 21 of the Constitution of India. In R v. Secretary of State the court held that:
Access to justice was a basic right which could not be denied or diluted by any kind of interference or hindrance. The court said it is a principle of our law that every citizen has a right of unimpeded access to a court.

In Raymond v. Honey Lord Wilberforce described:
access to justice as a 'Basic Rights. Even in our unwritten Constitution, it ranks as a constitutional right.

If the ends of justice is justice and the spirit of justice is fairness, then each side should have equal opportunity to prepare its own case and to lay its evidence fully, freely and fairly before the Court.

This necessarily involves preparation. Such preparation is far more effective from the point of view of justice, if it is made with the aid of skilled legal advice the advice so valuable that in the gravest of criminal trials, when life or death hangs in the balance, the very state which undertakes the prosecution of the prisoner, also provides him, if poor, with such legal assistance. Access to justice not only means access but also attainment of justice as well.
According to Justice Jonathan Lippman Right to legal representation and access is not enough to assure equal access to justice in our country there is a requirement of three elements leadership, innovation and partnership  and these should be focused more in order to the access to justice revolution. Judiciary was to be an arm of the social revolution upholding the equality that Indians had longed for.

Financial Inaccessibility

There is not proper utilization of budget as there is not sufficient budget for the investigating agencies rather, they has to spend their own earning to solve the mystery of the case. Moreover why would they be going to co-operate with the victim and accused when these so-called not having the sufficient earning to sustain their families life quite opposite in America the salaries and budgets are quite good as Bio-metrics Research Group, Inc. estimates that:
law enforcement spending on forensic DNA databases throughout North America will total approximately $750 million in 2015  as in India we find juxtaposition that there is no such fixing of budget for the forensic departments than how can people trust on the judiciary for the administration of justice in a case where the judiciary is independent in calling but reality says it is working and acting on the consequences of these law enforcement agencies who is handicapped with respect to financial accessibility.

Accountability Of Government

It is only to provide the punishment but side by side government do has the accountability to fix their infrastructure including their so called education system as education is misnomer here we should call it as business tactics. We have forgotten the meaning of education which in real sense is self-realization and government is passing amendments and ordinances but till now crime rate has not fallen it is increasing day by day crime rate in Delhi 2014 is 155654, in 2015 is 191377 and in 2016 is 209519.

Thus the education should be replaced with proper education and every single employment should include the basic qualification whether that education is private or public there has to be a basic qualification and those who work contrary to that provision should be subject to punishment these basic qualification which has to be provided by the government for free on an end note for the accountability of the government should work on this root cause then crime rate would automatically fall.

Monitoring Mechanism

India is bereft of such monitoring mechanism which is highly essential to strengthen the access to criminal justice system. The guidelines also provides States should ensure that mechanisms to track, monitor and evaluate legal aid are established and should continually strive to improve the provisions of legal aid.

For this purpose, States could introduce measures:
  1. To conduct regular research and collection of data dis aggregated by the gender, age, socioeconomic status and geographical distribution of legal aid recipients and to publish the findings of such research.
  2. To share good practices in the provision of legal aid.
  3. To monitor the efficient and effective delivery of legal aid in accordance with international human rights standards.
  4. To provide cross‑cultural, culturally appropriate, gender‑sensitive and age‑appropriate training to legal aid providers.
  5. To improve communication, coordination and cooperation between all justice agencies, especially at the local level, to identify local problems and to agree on solutions to improve the provision of legal aid.
In India there is no such monitoring mechanism as stated above there is a need of such mechanism in order to ensure better access to not only civil but also criminal justice.

Conclusion
The access to criminal justice is simple as we have already established system which is based on profound principles but that's not work out until we don't have enough independent bodies which can control them unbiased.

There are innumerable judgment above which have enough guidelines and recommendations but what we need is we have to strengthen the already established system before strengthening the access to criminal justice framework in India we have sufficient procedure laws I acknowledge I am not demeaning the procedure laws while referring the condition of India but accrue to this these are not enough we have to improve this bereft traditional system by improving the Number of judges, by controlling the enforcement agencies through suitable hands however we don't have direct connection to election commission but indirectly the representative are winning with criminal records these are also creating the obstacles by not allowing the traditional four goal system to improve we have to make the election commission body independent, there should be involvement of youth in politics with the agendas of how to enhance this contemporary problem which India is facing today.

Apart from this government has big role in this has to make policies has to pass budgets to improve the legal aids and if possible try to privatize this system and should provide sufficient financial aids so that the slogan justice delay is justice denied can be eradicated.

References
 International Conventions
  • The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
  • International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

Journals
  • De Smitha, Judicial Review of Administrative Action (5th Ed., 1995).
  • Shruti Chaudhary, Indian Criminal Justice System and Human Rights, 3 I.J.A.R.n.D. 271, 273 (2018).

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