The Supreme Court has chosen process over posture. On July 24, 2026, a Bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana, proposed special courts for cases from the 2023 Manipur violence, with an explicit push for day-to-day trials. It pressed investigating agencies to accelerate pending probes, and it created a rights-facing lane by ordering that chargesheets be supplied to victims’ families through legal aid counsels within a defined window once approached. The message is clear. Convert pendency into a docket with dates, disclosures and deliverables.

Why special courts, and why now

The Bench recorded what status reports from the CBI and the Special Investigation Team have already shown. Witnesses are hard to examine because many have been displaced or relocated. The prolonged suspension of internet services impeded digital evidence collection. Restrictions on movement of investigating officers hampered field work. Each factor has translated into delay.

Against that backdrop, the court made a concrete proposal. With the concurrence of the State of Manipur and the High Courts of Manipur and Gauhati, it would constitute special courts so that trials proceed day to day. This is not symbolic. Dedicated courts enable calendar discipline, prioritisation of vulnerable witnesses, and tighter oversight of adjournments. They also make compliance easier to monitor because hearing frequency becomes a measurable variable, not a vague aspiration.

Turn pendency into a calendar, and excuses become data points.

Building an audit trail for progress

The Bench did not stop at a structural fix. It directed Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati, appearing for the State, the SIT and the CBI, to collate case-wise information. The list must include matters where investigation has concluded and chargesheets have been filed, and those where the probe is ongoing. In the court’s words, this data is required to determine the strength of the special courts it proposes to establish. That requirement is an audit hook. Civil society groups and victims’ counsels can match the inventory of ready cases with the number of courtrooms notified and the actual frequency of hearings once the courts are set up.

The court also underlined the duty to expedite. It impressed upon the CBI and the SITs to conclude pending investigations and file the remaining chargesheets. It directed the Manipur Chief Secretary and the Director General of Police to provide full cooperation and effective coordination to remove the impediments already flagged. Coordination is not a platitude here. When witnesses are displaced and travel is constrained, arranging safe access, escorts or video facilities is the responsibility of the State apparatus. The Bench called for that assistance explicitly.

Disclosure to victims is a time-bound obligation

A strong due process intervention came on the issue of information flow to victims’ families. Advocate Vrinda Grover pointed out that despite previous directions, families had not received copies of chargesheets filed by the CBI and the SIT in two sexual violence cases. Taking note, the Bench issued a specific direction that turns a right into a timetable. It asked legal aid counsel and the Member Secretaries of the State Legal Services Authorities in Manipur and Gauhati to immediately contact the offices of the Chief Justices of the two High Courts to obtain the chargesheets. The order records that the authorities will ensure the supply of the chargesheets as early as possible, and no later than one week from the date the legal aid counsel contacts them.

This does two things. It creates a verifiable clock, since the trigger is the contact date by legal aid counsel. It also moves the burden of follow up from dispersed victims to institutional actors already within the justice system. Compliance can be documented with acknowledgments of receipt, and non-compliance can be flagged on the next listing.

What the status reports already show

The Bench took on record the latest CBI status report. It noted that chargesheets had been filed in 21 cases, while closure reports had been submitted in six cases, three of which had been accepted. The SIT, which is investigating 3,020 cases across eight districts, reported that charges had been framed in 31 cases and trials had commenced in 10 cases, while nearly 2,900 witnesses remained to be examined. These figures are not just markers of workload. They are a baseline to test whether the combination of special courts, day-to-day hearing schedules and coordinated assistance translates into higher throughput without sacrificing fairness.

The court also directed the investigating agencies to file fresh status reports before the next date of hearing. Regular filings matter because they provide a cadence against which slippage can be caught early. If there is continued difficulty in examining displaced witnesses or in collecting digital evidence, those obstacles will be on the record, and solutions can be ordered rather than assumed.

The continuity with earlier safeguards

This is not the first time the Supreme Court has put scaffolding around the Manipur investigations. In August 2023, it directed the CBI to take over the investigation of 30 heinous cases and shifted their trials to Assam to inspire confidence among victims and witnesses. It appointed former Maharashtra Director General of Police Dattatraya Padsalgikar to monitor the investigations and trials. It also constituted a three-member committee headed by Justice Gita Mittal, former Chief Justice of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, to examine rehabilitation and resettlement issues.

The latest set of directions fits that arc. Monitoring has value only if paired with instruments to accelerate progress when bottlenecks are identified. Special courts with day-to-day trials serve that purpose. So does the insistence on disclosures to victims’ families within a week of a formal approach by legal aid counsel. The directive to the Manipur High Court to look into cases relating to 30 missing persons adds a focused judicial forum for a specific class of cases where closure is urgent for families.

What to watch next

Three metrics will show if the pivot from proposals to performance is happening. First, whether concurrence is quickly obtained from the State of Manipur and the two High Courts, and whether the rostered strength of special courts matches the inventory of ready cases collated by the ASG. Second, whether day-to-day trials actually run as scheduled, especially in cases with vulnerable witnesses, and whether adjournments are the exception. Third, whether legal aid counsel can demonstrate timely receipt of chargesheets within one week of contact, across both High Court jurisdictions.

The court has chosen measurable milestones over open-ended exhortations. If the agencies file updated status reports on the next date showing movement on investigations, if the High Courts operationalise the disclosure window, and if the State machinery removes obstacles for field work, the arc of this docket can bend toward timely justice. The test, as always, is whether the paper trail produces outcomes in courtrooms, one hearing at a time.