New Delhi (PTI): Observing that litigants may become disillusioned if the legal process moves at a snail's pace, the Supreme Court on Friday issued directions, including a few to the high courts, for ensuring speedy trial and disposal of old cases.

A bench comprising justices S Ravindra Bhat and Aravind Kumar referred to the country-wide data of the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) on pendency of cases and said joint efforts by the bar and bench were needed to tackle the issue.

"Litigants may become disillusioned when the legal process moves at a snail's pace. We have expressed our anguish where some litigations are pending for 50 years as per NJDG," the bench said and referred to some old cases which have not been decided for over 65 years in states like West Bengal, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.

"Litigants will lose confidence in the judicial system when the delay continues," Justice Kumar said.

The bench said litigants should be circumspect about seeking frequent adjournments.

"....they should not take goodness of the presiding officers as their weakness," the judges said as they issued as many as 11 directions to deal with pendency of cases.

The bench said cases pending for over five years needed to be monitored by the respective high courts.

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Ramgarh (Jharkhand) (PTI): Jharkhand police on Thursday said it has unearthed a network of interstate cyber frauds and arrested four miscreants for fraudulent transactions through a bank account in Ramgarh district after complaints of 274 suspected transactions in 24 states.

The states where complaints for fraudulent transactions were registered included Maharashtra, Karnataka, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.

The action followed inputs received through 'Samanvaya portal', a centralised, web-based platform launched by the Union Home Ministry to curb cybercrime.

"We arrested four cyber miscreants after a current account with Kuju (Ramgarh) branch of the State Bank of India was found to have registered suspected financial transactions in 24 states with the help of the Pratibimba portal of the Home Ministry through the Samanvaya portal," Ramgarh Superintendent of Police Mukesh Kumar Lunayat said.

During the probe, police found that the account was opened under the MSME Udyam Registration scheme in the name of Shree Ganesh Enterprises, he said.

The account had been linked to as many as 274 complaints from different states related to cyber fraud and illegal fund transfers.

The registered proprietors of the enterprise were identified as Rahul Gupta (37), Ravi Kumar Verma (34), and Ajay Sharma (33), all residents of Ramgarh district, a statement from the Ramgarh police said.

During interrogation, Rahul Gupta and Ravi Kumar Verma revealed that they had opened multiple current accounts at the behest of Ritesh Agrawal alias Munna (40) and Sonu Kumar Jha (34).

They admitted receiving Rs 1.2 lakh in exchange for facilitating the opening of these accounts.

"The accused further confessed to sharing OTPs, activating mobile banking services, and handing over control of the accounts to the main operators through WhatsApp and Telegram groups. These accounts were then allegedly used to route fraudulent transactions.

Police said mobile data analysis of the accused led to the recovery of crucial digital evidence, including details of SIM cards, bank accounts, passbooks, ATM cards, QR code scanners, Aadhaar cards, and PAN cards shared through messaging platforms.

A total of four accused have been arrested so far and sent to judicial custody.

A case has been registered at the Cyber Crime Police Station under relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) 2023 and Sections 66C and 66D of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

Further investigation is underway, the police said.