NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has expressed serious concern over the ‘extraordinary delay’ by the Allahabad High Court in disposing of a 40-year-old criminal appeal filed by a man convicted of murder, terming the delay as “extremely worrisome” and has initiated measures to ease the stay in the court.
“If a man has to wait 40 years for his appeal to be heard, it defeats the purpose of filing an appeal,” said a two-judge high court bench headed by Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra and Justice S Chandurkar.
The bench made these observations against the Allahabad HC after hearing an appeal filed by the convict, Vijay Singh, seeking immediate direction to the HC to entertain his four-decade-pending plea.
Singh, was arrested in November 1983 when he was 28, after allegedly shooting his brother.
Singh was convicted by the court in 1984 under Section 302 (Murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sentenced to life imprisonment. He preferred an appeal before the Allahabad High Court in the same year, but unfortunately it was pending since then and no significant hearing took place till now.
Remarkably, Singh, now 68, served nearly 17 years in jail before the Supreme Court granted him bail in 2000. The appeal is yet to be heard on merits by the HC.
