Plea Bargaining: Indian Law Overview

This article tries to explore the genesis and notion of plea bargaining and present state of remedy in India post the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2005. Further it brings in suggestions for a better implementation of the Amendment. The article also throws light on how the Indian Judiciary has implemented the concept of plea bargaining. The article concludes that the amendment has been implemented in an extremely conscious manner and it is time to explore the wide impossibilities that plea bargaining has to offer. Plea Bargaining is introduced with the objective of lighten the courts of the burden of pendency of cases and speedier disposal of cases. As we all know, our judicial system is very powerful system around the world but having serious problem of judicial backlog and pendency of cases. Conviction rate is also very low. This paper analyse the process of Legislature to incorporate this concept on recommendations of Law Commission of India. Author tries to analyse the views of Supreme Court on plea bargaining with the help of cases. He also tries to trace the history of the concept of plea bargaining. Efforts have been made to lay down the procedure of plea bargaining in our criminal justice system. Further this paper talks about the defendant’s as well as prosecutor’s or Judge’s incentives for accepting Plea Bargaining and also find out the drawbacks of this concept. Finally author concludes by saying that there is need of strong mechanism or safeguards to make this concept more effective or to overcome the criticisms and to fulfill its desired objectives.