When we talk about criminal justice in India, most people think about the final verdict — whether someone is found guilty or innocent. But for many ordinary Indians, punishment is not in the verdict, but in the process itself. The waiting, the uncertainty, the endless hearings, and the years spent behind bars before a case even reaches a conclusion. The real punishment often begins long before the judge ever speaks.

In theory, our law says, “bail is the rule, jail is the exception.” But in the present times, it feels like the opposite. Getting bail today has become harder than before. As a result, thousands of people who haven’t been proven guilty are stuck in jail for years, waiting for their trial to end. According to government data, there are nearly four lakh undertrial prisoners in India — that means almost four lakh people behind bars who haven’t been convicted yet. For many of them, the not guilty in particular, their only crime appears to be being caught in a system that moves painfully slow.

If you visit any of the lower courts, you’ll see what this means. Families waiting outside courtrooms for years, hoping for a hearing that keeps getting postponed. Lawyers juggling multiple cases because of endless delays. People selling their land or borrowing money just to pay legal fees. And all this time, the accused, who may or may not be guilty, sits in a small, overcrowded cell, cut off from the world. Sometimes by the time their name is cleared, their youth, their reputation, and their hopes are already gone, and they have no compensation of such incarceration.

Former Chief Justice N.V. Ramana once said, “The process of criminal justice in the country has itself become a punishment.” He was right. The system that was meant to protect people’s rights often ends up crushing them instead. The police file charges, the case drags on, and people end up spending more time in jail waiting for trial than they ever would have if they were actually convicted. Even the judges know this is wrong.

Reason being, investigations take years, and witnesses forget what happened. Sometimes the police take shortcuts or file weak cases just to show action. Prosecutors are overburdened, and judges handle hundreds of cases at once. In a system where ‘a crime is to be proved beyond reasonable doubt’ and one is ‘innocent until proven guilty’, the system results in low conviction rates and society begins to lose faith in the process of law.

And hence, many people cheer when someone — especially a politician, businessman, or celebrity — is denied bail. They say, “Good, let them suffer!” – reason, most people believe that the trial will not result in conviction. But then, denying someone bail before proving their guilt is like punishing someone for a crime that hasn’t been proven. That isn’t justice — that’s revenge disguised as justice. But do we care anymore? 

Let’s think of a few real-life examples. Imagine a small-town shopkeeper accused of fraud because a supplier filed a false complaint. The police arrest him, and he spends months in jail because his lawyer can’t get bail approved quickly. His business shuts down, his family struggles to survive, and by the time he’s proven innocent, his life has already fallen apart. What good does that verdict do when the damage is already irreparably done?

Or take the case of a young man accused of theft who spends five years in jail waiting for his trial. When he’s finally acquitted, he steps out to find his parents gone, his job gone, his name ruined. The system may say he’s innocent — but the world doesn’t forget that he was once “accused.” This is what it means when we say the process has become the punishment.

The Supreme Court itself has recognized this painful truth. In recent years, judges have started saying openly that keeping someone locked up for years before trial is unfair. In one case, the court said, “Detention before being pronounced guilty should not become punishment without trial.” In another, the judges said, “Arrest must not be used as a tool of punishment.” These are powerful words, but on the ground, the reality hasn’t changed much.

But the problem goes beyond the courts. Society itself has become impatient. When someone is accused, we instantly assume they’re guilty. News channels run debates, headlines scream, and social media passes its own judgment. In that atmosphere, nobody talks about “innocent until proven guilty.” Instead, people believe that keeping someone behind bars — even without proof — is the only real way to make them pay. Natural for a world where conviction rates for serious crimes are in the single digits? 

This attitude is dangerous. Because it’s not just the powerful who get trapped — it’s the poor, the voiceless, and the ordinary. They don’t have lawyers who can fight endlessly or money to post bail. Many of them don’t even know their rights. They wait, helpless, as their cases crawl forward. For them, the trial is a tunnel with no light at the end.

The truth is, the criminal justice system in India moves so slowly that for many, the accused as well as society at large, it no longer feels like justice at all. The very process — meant to uphold fairness — ends up becoming a punishment in itself, for all concerned. People lose their homes, their dignity, their faith. And when they finally walk free, it’s not because the system worked, but often because it took too long to prove otherwise.

This isn’t just about legal reform. It’s about humanity. It’s about remembering that a justice system should protect, not destroy. If the State cannot provide a speedy trial, it should not oppose bail simply because the crime “sounds serious.” Because liberty is not a privilege — it’s a right guaranteed by divinity and recognized as such by our Constitution. And when that right is denied, the system fails its most basic duty.

The process should never be harsher than the punishment. But today, for many Indians, it is. Justice delayed is not just justice denied — it is justice undone. The innocent man who walks out of jail after years of waiting doesn’t come out free; he comes out broken.

Maybe it’s time we asked ourselves: when did the process of seeking justice become more painful than the crime itself? When did we start accepting suffering as part of the system?

Because until we fix that, every courtroom, every jail, every delay will continue to whisper the same truth — in India, it’s not always the verdict that punishes you. It’s this slow, painfully enduring, relentless process in itself that punishes both the accused and society. 

Anand Prasad, a corporate/commercial lawyer, is co-founder of Trilegal and AP & Partners. He has just published ‘Unshackling the Elephant — A Powerful Call to Rebuild Faith in India’s Justice System’ (Bloomsbury).