Fast justice, slow reform: Can fast track courts truly restore faith in India's justice system?

The proposal by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to establish fast-track courts (FTCs) for paper leak cases has once again brought India's long standing debate over speedy justice to the forefront. Coming amid widespread protests over repeated examination irregularities, the announcement reflects an understandable public demand for swift accountability. Yet it also raises a larger institutional question: can creating more fast track courts alone cure a justice system weighed down by structural delays, or does it merely offer a quicker lane on an already congested highway?

For lakhs of students whose futures have been repeatedly jeopardised by paper leaks, delayed justice carries consequences far beyond the courtroom. Every postponed trial translates into another examination cycle clouded by uncertainty, another year of lost opportunities, and another erosion of public trust in institutions that are expected to reward merit. Justice delayed in such cases is not merely a legal failure; it becomes a social and economic burden borne by young citizens.

Fast track courts, however, are not a new institutional experiment. They are also not creatures of a single parliamentary enactment. Their present framework traces its origin to the recommendations of the Fourteenth Finance Commission (2015–2020), which proposed the establishment of nearly 1,800 such courts to expedite trials involving heinous crimes such as murder, kidnapping and extortion, long pending property disputes, and cases concerning vulnerable sections including women, children, senior citizens, persons with disabilities and individuals suffering from terminal illnesses. The objective was straightforward: reduce pendency in categories where delay inflicts the greatest human cost.

A more specialised model emerged in 2019 when the Union government launched the Fast Track Special Courts (FTSCs) scheme following amendments in criminal law and directions from the Supreme Court. Financed partly through the Nirbhaya Fund, these courts were designed exclusively to conduct time bound trials of rape cases and offences under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. Their creation recognised an uncomfortable reality that survivors of sexual violence often endure a second trauma when judicial proceedings stretch over years.

Yet India's constitutional framework places important limits on how and when special courts may be constituted. Article 14, which guarantees equality before the law, does not permit arbitrary classification. This principle was emphatically affirmed in State of West Bengal v. Anwar Ali Sarkar (1952), where the Supreme Court struck down legislation allowing governments to select cases for special courts merely on the vague promise of ensuring a "speedier trial". Speed, the Court held, cannot by itself justify differential treatment. Any decision to fast track a category of cases must rest on rational and objective criteria, such as the nature of the offence or the vulnerability of victims, rather than executive convenience or public pressure.

India's judicial history nevertheless offers several examples where dedicated courts have been established for exceptional cases. A special court was constituted in Andhra Pradesh in 2010 to hear the Satyam Computer Services scam. Similarly, following directions of the Supreme Court, a dedicated court at Patiala House was notified in March 2011 for the trial of the 2G spectrum allocation case. Whether the ongoing NEET paper leak case, presently before a Delhi court, ultimately receives similar treatment remains to be seen.

Even where fast-track courts exist, litigants possess no automatic statutory right to insist upon fixed trial deadlines. The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) recommends that criminal trials ordinarily conclude within two years, while trials involving sexual offences should ideally finish within two months. These timelines, however, remain directory rather than mandatory. In P. Ramachandra Rao v. State of Karnataka (2002), a seven judge Constitution Bench categorically ruled that prescribing rigid outer limits for concluding criminal trials would amount to impermissible judicial legislation. The Court cautioned that while speedy justice forms an integral part of Article 21, it cannot come at the expense of procedural fairness or due process.

Measured purely by disposal rates, fast-track courts have delivered encouraging outcomes. As of January 2026, India had 862 regular Fast Track Courts functioning across 21 States and Union Territories alongside 774 Fast-Track Special Courts including 398 exclusive POCSO courts spread across 29 States and Union Territories. Their reported disposal rate stands at approximately 96 per cent. During 2024 alone, 88,902 fresh cases were instituted before FTSCs, while 85,595 were disposed of. On average, an FTSC clears nearly 9.5 cases every month almost three times the 3.3 cases disposed of monthly by an ordinary trial court exercising similar jurisdiction.

These figures demonstrate that dedicated courts can indeed improve efficiency. Yet statistics tell only part of the story. Despite consistently high disposal rates, more than 2.4 lakh cases remained pending before Fast Track Special Courts by the end of 2023. The backlog persists because fresh filings continue to outpace institutional capacity. Speed within individual courtrooms cannot compensate for systemic shortages across the broader justice delivery architecture.

The Ministry of Law and Justice, responding to a Lok Sabha question in March 2026, identified the reasons with unusual clarity. Judicial delays stem not from one bottleneck but from an interconnected chain of deficiencies: inadequate infrastructure, complex investigations, poor quality of evidence, limited forensic support, shortage of judges, weak coordination between investigating agencies and prosecutors, delayed witness examination, and procedural adjournments.

Legal experts further observe that the effectiveness of fast-track courts varies considerably across subject areas. Courts dealing with POCSO and Indian Penal Code offences often struggle under enormous case volumes and vacancies, whereas courts established under the Prevention of Corruption Act have generally performed better because of comparatively manageable dockets.

This reality underscores a larger lesson. Courts can accelerate adjudication only after investigations are completed, charge sheets are filed, forensic reports are submitted, witnesses appear, and prosecutors are adequately prepared. If these preceding links remain weak, even the fastest courtroom cannot deliver meaningful justice.

For victims, delayed justice is measured not in pendency statistics but in lived experience. It is reflected in students anxiously awaiting examinations that may again be cancelled, survivors of sexual violence reliving trauma with every adjournment, elderly litigants watching property disputes outlast generations, and families whose search for accountability slowly gives way to resignation. Every delayed judgment carries an invisible social cost that no annual disposal report fully captures.

The renewed push for fast track courts, therefore, should be welcomed as an acknowledgement that certain cases demand institutional urgency. But urgency must not be mistaken for reform. Unless accompanied by sustained investment in judicial infrastructure, timely appointments of judges, stronger forensic capabilities, better investigations, technological modernisation and greater coordination across the criminal justice system, fast tracking risks becoming an administrative response to public outrage rather than a durable solution to India's crisis of delayed justice.

Ultimately, justice is not delivered simply because a courtroom moves faster. It is delivered when institutions ensure that every citizen whether a student whose examination has been compromised, a survivor seeking dignity, or an ordinary litigant waiting years for resolution can approach the law with confidence that it will be both swift and fair. India's challenge is not merely to create more fast track courts, but to build a justice system where speed is the natural consequence of institutional strength rather than an exceptional privilege reserved for a select few.