Our Reporter
Dimapur, Feb. 22 (EMN): Department of Justice under Ministry of Law and Justice has implemented a centrally sponsored scheme for setting up 1023 fast track special courts (FTSCs), including 389 exclusive Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (e-Pocso) courts since October 2019.
Under this scheme, Nagaland has also set up one fast track special court and one e-Pocso court, which are said to be operational.
This information was given by the Union Minister for Ministry of Law and Justice Kiren Rijiju in the Lok Sabha.
Nagaland has the least number of operational FTSC and e-Pocso court among the north-eastern states while Assam has the highest with 15 each.
Meghalaya has set up five operational FTSCs and five e-Pocso courts, while Mizoram and Tripura has the same number of FTSCs and e-Pocso courts set up with three and one each respectively.
So far, 700 FTSCs (68%) including 383 e-Pocso courts have been made operational in 27 states/UTs as on December 2021.
Third party evaluation of the scheme was conducted by National Productivity Council (NPC) during the third quarter of 2020. Evaluation of the conviction rates of the FTSCs vis-a-vis the regular courts was one of the terms of reference of the study. As per the findings, it was observed that conviction to disposal rate for regular court cases, FTSC cases and e-Pocso court cases were 5.54%, 7.21% and 17.64% respectively.
Status of earmarked and functional FTSCs in NE as on Dec. 31, 2021
| Earmarked FTSCs | Functional FTSCs | |||
| States | FTSCs including ePOCSO | ePOCSO | FTSCs including ePOCSO | ePOCSO |
| Assam | 27 | 15 | 15 | 15 |
| Manipur | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Meghalaya | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Mizoram | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
| Nagaland | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Tripura | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 |