488 Cases Are Still Pending Against Elected Representatives In Bombay High Court

Mumbai: At a time when women's organisations want The Protection Of Women From Domestic Violence Act, 2005 to be more stringent, a total of 488 cases of domestic violence, rape, murder and other crimes are pending against elected representatives, mainly MLAs and MPs. Along with Maharashtra, the cases are from Goa and Diu-Daman, which fall under the jurisdiction of the Bombay High Court.

Only a few of these cases have been disposed while 488 cases are still pending, the Maharashtra government informed the Bombay High Court on Friday. In order to ensure that the pending cases are disposed of expeditiously, the Bombay High Court has fixed a time limit according to the category of these cases.

The High Court said in cases where the final arguments have started, the judicial process has to be completed within 30 days, and the cases will be decided as soon as possible. The court will also begin to record the statements of the accused under Section 313 of the CrPC in the next three weeks. After the completion of recording statements, the charges will be framed within four weeks. The High Court has ordered the sessions courts across Maharashtra to issue notices to the lawyers for them that the accused appear in court.

Chief Public Prosecutor Mankunwar Deshmukh gave details of the pending cases to the special bench comprising Chief Justice Chandrashekhar and Justice Nizamuddin Jamadar. Mankunwar clarified, the HC has brought a stay on a few of these cases. The court asked, "What efforts has the Maharashtra government made to lift this stay?"

Deshmukh assured the court, the applications will be filed urgently for hearings. In November 2023, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court had ordered all the High Courts across the country to file a suo motu petition and issued detailed guidelines to High Courts to expedite criminal cases against former and sitting MPs and MLAs.

Accordingly, in 2023, the then Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, Devendra Kumar Upadhyay, filed a suo motu petition. The High Court has clarified that the Maharashtra government should review the decisions of the cases withdrawn against the public representatives.

Accordingly, the Bombay High Court ordered the Maharashtra government to submit a list of cases applied by the current and former MLAs and MPs for withdrawal, and some had even asked for a stay to be brought on their cases, even though the state government has not demanded either of it.

The suo moto petition was filed by the SC after the Association for Democratic Reforms examined 4,693 out of 4,809 affidavits of sitting MPs and MLAs, from their affidavits submitted to the Election Commission of India during elections between 2019 and 2024. The organisation identified 16 MPs and 135 MLAs facing cases related to crimes against women.

In 2020-21, the National Commission for Women received 26,513 complaints from women, of domestic violence cases, an increase of 25.09 per cent, compared with the 20,309 complaints registered in 2019-20.

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