Judicial Power without accountability

Magistrates have tremendous power without concurrent supervision and without visible accountability. There is an uncanny similarity in the work of an airlines pilot, a doctor and a magistrate, but the similarity limits to professional nature of the work concerned, that is, their action if done negligently can play havoc with the lives of people, but it is vastly different as far as accountability is concerned.

All the three if act negligently or without application of mind or without due care, then the lives of people get affected, if a doctor makes mistake in the diagnosis, he can create the havoc, psychological havoc with his patient, if the airline pilot makes a mistake, then he puts the life of all the passenger in danger and if the magistrate makes the mistake in the trial (cognizance = Diagnosis, trial = treatment) then the entire life of such person is compromised in every way psychologically, physically, mentally, financially, socially…

So the responsibility on the magistrate is much higher than that on an airline pilot or on a doctor. If the doctor makes a mistake, he can be produced in front of the magistrate to answer for his accountability, if the pilot makes a mistake, his name can be sullied even after his death in the accident. What if the magistrate makes the mistake? Have you ever heard of any accountability? Have you ever heard that a magistrate was facing the trial for incorrect or negligent cognizance of offense? Even though there are numerous orders of Hon Higher courts setting aside the trial after years of prolonged litigation…that so and so Ld magistrate did not apply his mind and hence..Why this special treatment to magistrates after all everyone is expected to do their duty with utmost care, honesty, fearlessness, if others can be held responsible for their omissions then why not magistrates?

So at present practically a magistrate acts without any visible accountability and can put the life of any person produced in front him in grave instability on all conceivable fronts. And shockingly the possibility of mistakes by a magistrate is much higher than that of mistake by a doctor or by an airline pilot or even by an engineer.  The reason is not far to seek, a doctor when carrying out any critical procedure, has a team to support concurrently, it is kind of a parallel processing with multiple experienced and new trainee doctors (less experienced) working on a patient, a less experienced pilot (trainee or first officer) is ably supported by a commander (and even sometimes by a highly experienced trainer pilot), so this is also a concurrent supervision and close monitoring of acts of young recruits leaving lesser possibility of error. Similarly for almost all the professions, where seniors guide the young people or trainee people in process. The judiciary is the only profession where the young or not so experienced are given absolute freedom to act as per their knowledge or lack of knowledge, there is supervision but there is no visible concurrent supervision at the ground level, one can approach the higher experienced courts only after his fate is decided by young trial court magistrate, by that time litigant is fully drained.

Despite this the Hon law commission or the Hon Supreme Court never thought of strengthening this or at least there are no visible sign of any attempt to strengthen the lower judiciary. It cannot be stated that those young magistrates are omniscient; in fact the traces can be found out in abundance that many of these young magistrates are arrogantly pretentious of being omniscient, which is extremely dangerous.

The author can be contacted at advocate.dma@gmail.com or http://extreme-analysis.blogspot.in/