New study based on court data differs from NCRB, more child labour cases in six states

The report, “The Possibilities of eCourts Data for Advancing Research on Law Implementation” was launched on Thursday by former Supreme Court Justice Madan Lokur at the India International Centre (IIC) in Delhi. The eCourts Mission Mode Project is a pan-India project, monitored and funded by the Department of Justice, Ministry of Law and Justice, for district courts across the country. It is an online platform where case details, such as pendency, next date of hearing and stage, can be found.

The latest report elaborates how eCourts helped them arrive at their conclusions from a dataset of 10,800 child labour cases from these six states.

While the NCRB is the primary source of information on crime data in the country, it follows what is called the “Principal Offence Rule”. As per this mechanism, only the most heinous crime (maximum punishment) is considered as a counting unit among multiple offences registered in a single FIR case, the report revealed. Thus, the report stated, when minor crimes are clubbed with serious offences, the minor offences are not reflected in the data.

While releasing the report, Justice Lokur said the “justice delivery system is facing a crisis…”

“Let’s face it,” he said. “There are lakhs of cases pending. For example, look at the cheque bounce cases. There are lakhs of these pending (in courts). What is pending can only be identified via data.”

Justice Lokur emphasised that judicial data was meant not only for litigants but for academicians and researches to study policy issues and this data can be “utilised to improve the justice delivery system”.

“Crimes committed against children are three times the number of crimes committed by juveniles,” he said, emphasising the importance of data to understand the larger picture.

“You need data to know what the trends are… only when data is available, will research… and solutions become easier.”