SHAH KANTILA BHEEMCHAND Vs. STATE OF GUJARAT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Leave granted.

(2.) The appellant is one among the accused who were convicted for the offence under section 302 with the help of section 149 of the Indian Penal Code. He filed an appeal in the High Court in the year 1997 and applied for suspension of sentence and the same was not granted by the High Court. He again repeated the prayer for suspension in the year 2001 but that was again rejected by the High Court as per the impugned order.

(3.) Initially, we thought of granting the benefit of the decision of this Court in the matter of Akhtari Bi (Smt. ) v. State of madhya Pradesh [ (2001) 4 SCC 355] but mr. Sushil Kumar, learned senior counsel submitted that he may have to wait for another period to acquire the benefit of that judgment. When he submitted that there in no scope for the appeal to be boarded in the near future before the high Court we called for a report from the registrar of the Gujarat High Court. The report sent by the registrar shows that appeals are pending in the High court of Gujarat from 1992 onwards in which persons convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment are waiting to have their turn to reach. This is a very disturbing picture. Some measures have to be adopted for early clearance of such an alarming backlog of life convicts waiting to have their first appeals from 1992 onwards adjudicated on.