After pulling up Jharkhand HC, Supreme Court now tells all HCs to list cases where verdict reserved but pending

On Monday, a division bench of Justices Surya Kant and N K Singh said that reports from all the High Court Registrar Generals “shall contain the Criminal Appeals and Civil Matters separately with a further specification as to whether it is a Division Bench Matter or a Single Bench Matter.”

“The composition of Benches shall also be disclosed. The Registrar General of the High Courts shall furnish the requisite information within four weeks,” it said.

The SC also took on record The Indian Express report, ‘After SC rap, HC decides 75 criminal appeals in a week’, and took cognisance of it. “The news item published in the newspaper – Indian Express, dated 05.05.2025, be kept on record,” the bench directed.

The bench also directed the Registrar General of the Jharkhand HC to furnish the list of the 75 criminal appeals where it had pronounced judgments. It said the list “shall indicate the date(s) when the judgments were reserved along with soft copies of the judgments pronounced by the High Court”.

The top court’s April 23 direction came while it was hearing a petition by four convicts who said judgments in their appeals against conviction were pending for over three years. The SC had directed the Jharkhand HC’s Registrar General to furnish details of cases where judgment was reserved more than two months ago.

Meanwhile, going through the Jharkhand HC report, which was furnished in a sealed cover, the court recorded in its order that “there are 56 matters, including some Criminal Appeals, where a learned Division Bench of the (Jharkhand) High Court has finally heard the matters on different dates ranging from 04.01.2022 till 16.12.2024 but the final pronouncements are still awaited. There are 11 Single Bench Matters also before another Hon’ble Judge where the judgments are reserved on different dates between 25.07.2024 to 27.09.2024.”

“However, the list of 56 matters, sent by the Registrar General of the Jharkhand High Court, does not contain the Criminal Appeals filed by the petitioners.”

The court has now asked the Jharkhand HC about the fate of the criminal appeals filed by the four petitioners.

These four are in prison on charges ranging from murder, rape and under the Arms Act, with incarceration spanning over a decade, and over 16 years in the case of one convict. The petitioners had also submitted before the SC that apart from them, there are 10 other convicts in the same situation before the Jharkhand HC whose appeals have been heard but judgments have not been pronounced “for approximately three years”.

The court will hear the case on July 31. It posted the matters for consideration of bail to the four petitioners to May 13.

It has additionally directed the Jharkhand State Legal Services Authority to “ensure that appropriate proceedings are initiated in all the 10 matters,” for the purpose of seeking suspension of their sentence and consequently, to seek their release on bail during the pendency of their appeals.

It also directed the state body “to take immediate necessary steps to provide legal assistance…and ensure that the convicts like the petitioners are not left remediless”.