Delays in criminal justice erode victims' confidence. Comment.

Justice delayed is confidence denied. The appeal in the 2013 Tehelka rape case reached only the notice stage before the Supreme Court in September 2026 — thirteen years after the offence [1]. Such timelines show that delay is not merely an administrative failing but a direct assault on a victim's faith in the system.

How delay erodes the victim's confidence

• Frozen life: the victim's personal recovery remains tied to hearing dates stretching across years [1].
• Weaker evidence: witness memory fades with time, diluting the prosecution's own case and raising the risk of an unsatisfying outcome.
• Uncertain finality: after the Bombay High Court's 10-year sentence, both the convict's appeal and Goa's plea for enhancement to life remain undecided, so the victim has no settled verdict [1].
• Cost of participation: a criminal trial delivers a judgment, not support; the Justice Verma Committee therefore urged the Centre and States to create a corpus to compensate victims of crimes against women [2].

Why the delay is structural

• Every case climbs three tiers — trial court, High Court, Supreme Court — joining a fresh queue at each level.
• The Verma Committee was constituted in 2013 precisely to secure quicker trial in sexual violence cases [2]; the very case of that year still runs.
• This undermines the speedy trial dimension of Article 21, read by courts into the right to life and personal liberty.

A qualification Delay is the largest, but not the only, cause of erosion. Confidence also turns on proportionate sentencing within the wide 7-years-to-life band under Section 376(1) IPC, carried forward by the BNS, 2023 [3], and on institutional accountability in workplaces, where Verma held employers liable to compensate [2].

Delay converts a legal remedy into an endurance test. Time-bound appellate disposal, fast-track courts with filled vacancies, and an operational victim-compensation corpus can restore faith. A justice system is trusted not merely when it punishes correctly, but when it does so while the victim can still feel it.