Justice Takes Bus To Mewat !

New Delhi, Aug 2 (UNI) Deterrence to crime may be more pronounced when India's first Court-on-Wheels rolls on Saturday into Mewat to bring justice to a million residents of one of its most backward districts, organisers say.

''This is a step towards fulfilling the Constitutional mandate to provide justice for all,'' Punjab and Haryana High Court Chief Justice Vijender Jain told journalists in New Delhi last week.

The project-- Reaching the Unreachable-- will be launched by Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan at Punhana town of Mewat on August 4.

Situated in Haryana, Mewat probably has among the nation's lowest literacy rates-- about 1.5 per cent for women and 20 per cent for men, Justice Jain said.

The Court-on-Wheels will have its first sitting on August 6.

The airconditioned bus, costing about Rs 20,00,000, will have on board the judge-- Subdivisional Magistrate Sandeep Singh-- a peshkar and an ahlmad who keeps court records.

The Court-on-Wheels will park in a school compound where litigants and lawyers may wait their turn.

The dwellers of 490-odd villages in the region hitherto went to a subdivisional court in Firozpur Jhirka, which has some 2,250 cases on record, including 600 civil cases and 1,600 plus criminal cases, Justice Jain said.

It will now become their appellate court.

This is the first time adjudicatory justice will travel on a bus to litigants-- as opposed to such fora as Lok Adalatas which settle cases through mediation or conciliation.

To begin with, the Court-on-Wheels will visit Punhana four days in the first week, followed by four days the next week to Shikrawa, and similarly to Indana and Lohinga Kalan the following weeks.

The Court-on-Wheels is equipped to enable the presiding officer to work in the privacy of a retiring room at the vehicle's rear, with a computer at his disposal and enough room to seat ten.

Like any court, the Court-on-Wheels will receive plaints, miscellaneous civil and criminal applications, grant bail or remand accused to custody, record evidence, pronounce judgements and decrees, pass sentences and commit convicts to prison.

Critics say the element of deterrence is almost missing from Indian jurisprudence, given long-drawn processes, inordinate delays, ineffective punishments, to name some factors.

Asked about it, Justice Jain pointed out that when a convict is handcuffed in his village, before people he knows and who know him, it ''works as a deterrence to crime.'' UNI