The Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that mere blaming “unforeseen circumstances” without proof is not enough to justify a delay in filing a plea against an earlier court order. Justice Sumeet Goel made the observation while rejecting Chandigarh’s plea to condone a delay of 173 days in challenging the acquittal of a minor.

“Simply attributing the delay to unforeseen circumstances, without any details or evidence to support these assertions, does not meet the legal threshold of tolerance,” Justice Goel said. Virtually angering the UT for its failure to adopt a proactive approach, the court added that the requesting state had neither shown interest in the case nor presented any exceptional or unavoidable circumstances that could explain such a significant delay.

The application was submitted by the UT as part of an acquittal judgment issued by the Juvenile Justice Board on March 21, 2018. But the UT in its application provided only a cursory explanation, citing that the Legal Memorandum and Director of Prosecutions of the Chandigarh Administration, directed the prosecution to file a review petition against the judgment of acquittal, even though the time limit prescribed for filing such a plea was already expired.

The court found that Chandigarh’s explanation completely lacked credibility or substantial details. Justice Goel observed: “A perusal of the statements clearly shows that no reasonable or plausible explanation has been provided by the petitioner State to justify the delay of 173 days in filing the accompanying review petition. »

Making it clear that the authorities were fully aware of the 90-day delay in filing a review petition, Justice Goel observed that the delay was both excessive and unexplained. “The requesting State has not provided any concrete explanation or documentation demonstrating its genuine efforts to pursue the case within the prescribed time frame,” ruled the court, which concluded that the argument in favor of the delay was without merit.