Port Blair, Jan 3: Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation, Amit Shah, on Saturday, said justice should be delivered on time.
Chairing a meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee of the Ministry of Home Affairs at Sri Vijaya Puram in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Union Home Minister said that it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision that after the new criminal laws are fully implemented, justice should be delivered on time.
He said that the Centre would create such a system by 2029 in which the entire judicial process – from FIR to the Supreme Court – can be completed within three years. Shah said that the reforms undertaken since 2022 had been efforts in this very direction.
He said that to turn the vision of completing the entire process from FIR to Supreme Court justice within three years into reality, the Ministry of Home Affairs was doing 360-degree monitoring of these efforts and working to address any shortcomings.
The Home Minister said that after the introduction of the New Criminal Laws, there had been an increase in the speed of investigations and the conviction rate.
He said that the Centre and state governments were going to invest Rs 30,000 crore over the next five years to build a network of forensic laboratories across the country.
Shah said that the Centre had strengthened the “chain of custody” not merely through circulars, but from a judicial perspective. “The videography of seizures has been made mandatory so that no false allegations can be leveled against the Police,” he said.
The Home Minister said that digital and electronic evidence has now been clearly defined.
He said that cybercrime, organised crime, terrorism, and digital fraud were not clearly defined earlier, but now they were explicitly defined, thereby reducing grey areas for the courts.
“The implementation of ‘trial in absentia’ will curb the tendency of accused persons fleeing the country,” Shah said. He said that today, every FIR is available on the central server. “In the coming days, a ‘Modus Operandi Bureau’ will also be established for the mapping of crimes,” the Home Minister said.