* Over 50,000 cases pending trial; clearing backlog requires tackling 137 cases per day
* Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra states top the charts
A joint report by India-based Down To Earth and Centre for Science and Environment, CSE, has revealed that environmental crime cases piling up, with courts disposing the cases at snail-pace in India.
The “2021 State of India’s Environment (SoE) report”, which was released on Saturday at an online event, was attanded by over 60 environmental thinkers, activists, journalists and academics from across India, and a copy mailed to ASHENEWS.
It observed that though with a drop in the number of wildlife crimes in India between 2019 and 2020, the country sees only two cases recorded every day.
See the proceedings of the release event and other details: https://www.cseindia.org/
The report details that while 34,671 environment-related crimes were registered in 2019, over 7,000 were pending police investigation and almost 50,000 cases were pending trial in courts.
Of these it added, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra states, accounted for 77 per cent of India’s wildlife crimes in 2019 and between 2018 and 2019, some states saw an increase in wildlife crimes, including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal and all the states of the northeast.
“We have a long way to go, when it comes to dealing with environmental crimes,” says Down To Earth’s wildlife and forest reporter Ishan Kukreti. “At the rate at which we are going, courts will need to dispose of a humungous 137 cases a day to clear the existing backlog within a year.”
The courts are, understandably, stretched. In 2019, the average number of cases (under all environment and pollution-related laws) they managed to dispose of every day stood at about 86.
The SoE’s analysis shows that in all of 2019, only 0.13 cases under the EPA (Environment (Protection) Act) could be disposed of every day – at this rate, courts would take more than 20 years to clear the backlog of cases under this Act. Similarly, cases under the Wildlife Protection Act (a mere 0.66 were disposed off per day in 2019) would take over 13 years.
Says Down To Earth managing editor Richard Mahapatra: “The maximum number of cases that courts are managing to dispose of currently come under the Cigarette and Other Tobacco Products Act and the Noise Pollution Act. We need to clear the backlog under the other laws as well. Environmental crimes – as the United Nations has pointed out – have the potential to threaten security and sustainable development of nations, and must be dealt with a heavy hand.”
Buy the State of India’s Environment 2021 annual report: https://csestore.cse.org.in/
