CBI Cases - Conviction Rate: A Reality Check

By Vijay Kumar

Shatrujeet Kapur , DIG, CBI Jaipur had made a study on the highly rated conviction rate in CBI cases and comes up with interesting details.

As per official statistics, conviction rate in CBI in the last 10 years has been as under:-

The above table demonstrates that the conviction rate has ranged between 57.1% and 72.64%. This looks impressive. However, conviction rate in CBI is calculated on the basis of cases resulting in conviction as a percentage of total number of cases disposed of by courts in a year. Clearly, the focus is on cases ending in conviction , rather than accused persons being convicted. This definition has certain limitations:-

(1) Only if one accused is convicted in a case, the whole case is deemed to have resulted in conviction, even though rest of the accused may have been acquitted.

(2) At times, accused persons confess after an informal understanding is reached and only a mild sentence is imposed in such cases like ‘till rising of the court' etc. Such cases inflate the conviction rate.

(3) Conviction rate takes into account only the outcome of trial at the first stage i.e. judgement of the trial court. In several instances, convicted persons are later acquitted by the appellate court. Official conviction rate at present does not reflect decisions of the appellate courts.

Substantive Conviction Rate is less than 4% and is a telling commentary on the state of affairs of our criminal justice system.