&ldquo;Justice delayed is justice denied&rdquo; is more than a legal aphorism &mdash; it is a daily reality in India, where tragedies that should spark swift accountability instead sink into decades of delay. The Uphaar Cinema inferno in Delhi is its most glaring example. In June 1997, 59 unsuspecting filmgoers were killed after a fire broke out in the building. The trial court found the theatre owners guilty under charges of negligent homicide and sentenced them to two years&rsquo; imprisonment. Yet the legal process, with appeals, revisions, and challenges, crawled its way through India&rsquo;s judicial ladders until 2023 &mdash; twenty-six long years later. By then, justice had already lost its urgency, relevance, and sting.
But Uphaar is not an exception &mdash; it is the template.
Gujarat, which prides itself on development, has seen a series of fire and structural disasters &mdash; all followed by the same sashaying judicial lethargy. The Takshashila fire in Surat killed 22 schoolchildren. The TRP gaming zone fire in Rajkot claimed 27 lives. A leisure boat tragedy in Vadodara&rsquo;s Harni lake drowned 17 people, including 15 children. The Shrey Hospital fire in Ahmedabad snuffed out 8 innocent lives. A Covid facility blaze at Bharuch&rsquo;s Welfare Hospital killed 18 patients. The Morbi suspension bridge collapse, the deadliest of them all, took 135 lives in one horrifying night.
Each of these tragedies was preventable. Each demanded urgent, transparent investigation and strict, time-bound justice. Instead, FIRs are filed, committees formed, compensation announced, and then cases linger in trial courts, moving like molasses through procedural quicksand. The anguish of victims&rsquo; families, the erosion of public faith in institutions, and the message of impunity to negligent actors &mdash; all continue with regularity, almost routine.
And yet, beyond our borders, other legal systems show what urgency looks like. In January 2025, a fire gutted a 12-storey hotel at a ski resort in Turkey, killing 78 people, including 34 children, and injuring over a hundred. Within ten months, a Turkish court not only completed its hearings but handed life sentences to the hotel owner and ten others for severe negligence. Ten months. Not ten years, not ten adjournments &mdash; justice delivered while memory was still raw and accountability still mattered.
Why can&rsquo;t India, the world&rsquo;s largest democracy, match that pace? Our courts are overburdened, no doubt. Our laws are layered and our procedures cautious, certainly. But what about cases where guilt is evident, where death tolls are high, and where systemic negligence led directly to mass casualties? Why can&rsquo;t we have dedicated fast-track courts for such tragedies, with legally bound timelines and special benches?
It is time the Indian judiciary recognises that delay is not neutrality &mdash; it is denial. When victims wait a generation for closure, when the guilty age and die before sentencing, the system is not impartial &mdash; it is complicit. Justice that arrives after a quarter-century is not justice. It is a bureaucratic obituary.

From Uphaar to Gujarat flops, India’s courts crawl while Turkey punishes in 10 months

Justice on Snooze: India’s Verdict Lag Habit

From Uphaar to Gujarat flops, India’s courts crawl while Turkey punishes in 10 months

November 1, 2025 | 15:15 IST