A man accused of murder was freed by the Supreme Court after 21 years of legal struggle, underlining the grim reality of judicial delays in India. What makes this case particularly striking is that the appeal remained pending before the Supreme Court for over 13 years, with the judgment reserved for nearly 11 months before being delivered.
Md Bani Alam Mazid was arrested in August 2003 following allegations of kidnapping and murder of a minor girl, who was 16 years old.
The sessions court in Kamrup convicted him in 2007, sentencing him to life imprisonment.
In 2010, the Gauhati High Court upheld the conviction, leading Mazid to challenge the verdict in the Supreme Court in 2011.
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When his appeal was first taken up in August 2011, the Supreme Court directed him to renew his bail plea after two years.
However, despite an order to expedite proceedings in 2017, his request for interim bail was rejected. It was only in October 2018 that Mazid was granted an eight-week interim bail to attend to his ailing mother, after which he was forced to return to prison.
It took over a decade for the case to finally reach a decisive stage in the Supreme Court. On March 21, 2024, arguments were concluded and judgment was reserved.
Yet, it took 11 months for the verdict to be pronounced on February 24, 2025, during which Mazid continued to languish in custody.
A bench of justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan ultimately ruled that the prosecution had failed to establish the accused’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, entitling him to acquittal and immediate release.
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In its judgment, the bench highlighted crucial gaps in the prosecution’s case, as it noted that the high court had already discarded the extra-judicial confessions allegedly made by Mazid before some witnesses as inadmissible.
With this crucial link broken, the bench held, the prosecution’s circumstantial chain was incomplete.
Moreover, inconsistencies in witness testimonies and the long gap between the last sighting of the victim and the recovery of the body further weakened the case, it said.
The bench also noted that Mazid and the victim were in a relationship, with his family having assured the victim’s father of their marriage. This, along with a lack of evidence suggesting sexual assault or financial motive, cast serious doubts over the prosecution’s version of events.
“We are of the view that none of the circumstances put forth by the prosecution to prove the guilt of the appellant can be said to have been proved, not to speak of proving the complete chain of circumstances, to dispel any hypothesis of innocence of the appellant. When the prosecution failed to prove each of the circumstances against the appellant, the courts below were not justified in convicting the appellant,” declared the court, ordering Mazid’s release from prison.
Advocates Azim H Laskar and Abhijit Sengupta represented Mazid throughout his legal battle.
This case starkly highlights the severe backlog in the Indian judiciary.
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According to the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG), more than 55% of criminal cases pending before the Supreme Court are over a year old. As of now, the apex court is grappling with a total pendency of 81,274 cases.
Having spent over two decades behind bars for an offence the prosecution could not establish, Mazid’s ordeal raises pressing questions about the efficiency of India’s judicial system.
The prolonged delay in delivering the judgment after arguments had concluded further highlights the grave consequences of judicial inertia, especially from an institution that must lead by example in safeguarding personal liberty.
As the Supreme Court has often emphasised, even a single day of unjust deprivation of liberty is one too many.