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Writer's pictureShantanu Panigrahi

Justice delayed is justice denied


The importance of the adage ‘justice delayed is justice denied’ cannot be overemphasised. When the judicial system delays action it not only prolongs the suffering of victims, equally as important, it allows criminals to continue to benefit from their past criminal activities and perhaps enter into new ones thinking that justice will never catch up with them. In the worst case scenario the victim may even have died without having had his concerns dealt with by the judicial system.


Court officials must therefore act immediately on receipt of a representation made by email or by post to let the sender know that the matter is receiving attention and giving a time-scale by which a full response will be given if nothing more can be divulged immediately for logistical reasons. This ensures that the person has got legal cover that updated proceedings are lodged and are considered pertinent so that he or she can respond to associated matters accordingly. An auto-response by email that is furnished frequently in the United Kingdom is not sufficient for it is a meaningless piece of document that does not guarantee that a formal reply will be sent at any time.


Delays might be a way of allowing the other parties in a dispute to take avoidance action to the lodgement of a document to thereby enable the manipulation of proceedings launched by a claimant. If the email has been sent and not returned as failure to deposit the matter at the receiver’s end then the sender has a record that the material was sent. What is needed is a manually generated response that shows that the content of the email is relevant to the proceedings or irrelevant.


When the legal authorities do not do respond promptly in civil proceedings the claimant has a right to claim that justice has been denied. This because tomorrow is another day in which the situation faced by the victim-sender would almost certainly have changed in that the evidence of the crime being reported would have been manipulated to suppress its prima facie character, or the interest in the pursuit of justice might have waned because of changes to personal financial situation and other social changes so that the victim may philosophically decide that life has moved on and his priorities should with this reality.

The delays in the judicial process may of course be merely a reflection of administrative faults of the system in operation so that the citizen may be asked to be patient or be expected to be patient. The State may however have other reasons for causing delays deliberately. In either event there does come a time when the victim has to say ‘enough is enough’ and that he must wait no further for justice. He needs to identify better things to do with the rest of his life.


After 17 years I have now reached the point where I must terminate my involvement with British Justice as I have a number of publications in my mind that need my attention through both this Blog media and in the form of printed matter that I must complete before I die.

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