Judgment

O. CHINNAPPA REDDY, J.:- It is one of the sad and distressing features of our criminal justice system that an accused person, resolutely minded to delay the day of reckoning, may quite conveniently and comfortably do so, if he can but afford the cost involved, by journeying back and forth, between the Court of first instance and the superior Courts, at frequent interlocutory stages. Applications abound to quash investigations, complaints and charges on all imaginable grounds, depending on the ingenuity of client and counsel. Not-in-frequently, so soon as a Court takes cognizance of a case requiring sanction or consent to prosecute, the sanction or consent is questioned as improperly accorded, so soon as a witness is examined or a document produced, the evidence is challenged as illegally received and many of them are taken up to the High Court and some of them reach this Court too on the theory that it goes to the root of the matter. There are always petitions alleging assuming the entire prosecution case to be true, no offence is made out, And, inevitably proceedings are stayed and trials delayed. Delay is a known defence tactic. With the passage of time, witnesses cease to be available and memories cease to be fresh. Vanishing witnesses and fading memories render the onus on the prosecution even more burdensome and make a welter weight task a heavy weight one. Sure, we do not mean to suggest that the responsibility for delaying criminal trials is always to be laid at the door of the rich and the reluctant accused. We are not unmindful of the delays caused by the tardiness and tactics of the prosecuting agencies. We know of trials which are overdelayed because of the indifference and somnolence or the deliberate inactivity of the prosecuting agencies. Poverty-struck, dumb accused persons, too feeble to protest, languish in prisons for months and years on and awaiting trial because of the insensibility of the prosecuting agencies. The first Hussainara case (Hussainara Khatoon v. Home Secretary, State of Bihar, Govt. of Bihar, Patna, (1979) 3 SCR 169 at p. 179, 180 was one like that. Sometimes when the evidence is of a weak character and a conviction is not a probable result, the prosecuting agencies adopt delaying tactics to keep the accused persons in incarceration as long as possible and to barass them. This is a well known tactic in most conspiracy cases. Again, an accused person may be seriously jeopardised in the conduct of his defence with the passage of time. Witnesses for the defence may become unavailable and their memories too may fade like those of the witnesses for the prosecution. In Such situations, in appropriate cases, we may readily infer an infringement of the right to life and liberty guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution. Denial of a speedy trial may with or without proof of something more lead to an inevitable inference of prejudice and denial of justice. It is prejudice to a man to be detained without trial. It is prejudice to a man to be denied a fair trial. A fair trial implies a speedy trial. In Hussainara Khatoon v. State of Bihar, (1969) 3 SCR 169 this Court said (at p. 179) (of SCR) :

"Speedy trial is of the essence of criminal justice and there can be no doubt that delay in trial by itself constitutes denial of justice. It is interesting to note that in the United States speedy trial is one of the constitutionally guaranteed rights. The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution provides that in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial. So also, Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides that every one arrested or detained - shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release pending trial.

We think that even under our Constitution, though speedy trial is not specifically enumerated as a fundamental right, it is implicit in the broad sweep and content of Article 21 as interpreted by this Court in Maneka Gandhi v