Discuss the circumstances under which the Supreme Court can monitor or transfer ongoing criminal trials. What constitutional provisions and precedents govern such intervention?

The right to a fair trial is intrinsic to Article 21, and where state machinery appears partisan, the Supreme Court steps in — not as an appellate court but as the guardian of the criminal justice process. The Lakhimpur Kheri trial, still under the Court's watch in 2026, illustrates both the need and the limits of such intervention.

Circumstances warranting intervention

• Suspected bias of state prosecution: where police or prosecutors appear to shield the politically powerful, as alleged before the Court in the Lakhimpur Kheri case [5].
• Witness intimidation and hostility: threats or inducements defeating testimony — the trigger for judicial oversight in the Best Bakery case and for the Witness Protection Scheme, 2018 [2][3].
• Inordinate delay: prolonged non-examination of witnesses defeats the statutory scheme of time-bound trial now embedded in the BNSS, 2023 [4].
• Cases of grave public importance involving communal violence, custodial excesses or sexual offences, where local conditions vitiate impartiality.

Constitutional basis and precedents

• Article 136 — discretionary special leave, the usual doorway to the Court in such matters [1].
• Article 142 — power to pass any order for "complete justice"; used to transfer trials and to declare the Witness Protection Scheme binding law until legislation is enacted [1][3].
• Article 32/21 — fair trial as a fundamental right of victims, not the accused alone [1].
• Zahira Habibullah Sheikh v. State of Gujarat (2004) — retrial ordered outside Gujarat, the classic authority on transfer [2].
• Mahender Chawla v. Union of India (2018) — witness protection judicially institutionalised [3].
• Continuing mandamus through periodic status reports, as in the ongoing Lakhimpur Kheri monitoring [5].

Such intervention is therefore exceptional, not routine — a corrective invoked only when ordinary machinery fails. Its recurrence signals that the durable remedy lies elsewhere: a statutory witness protection law, independent directorates of prosecution, and genuine enforcement of BNSS timelines. Judicial vigilance must remain the exception; institutional integrity, the rule.