India's Judicial Crisis
India's judiciary is facing a systemic crisis of unprecedented scale. With over 40 million cases pending across courts at every level, the backlog represents not just institutional failure but a profound human cost — justice delayed for millions of citizens, economic productivity lost to unresolved commercial disputes, and constitutional rights deferred indefinitely.
The numbers are stark: India has less than half the recommended judicial capacity relative to its population. The average case takes 30 months to resolve, compared to six months in the European Union. Only 0.1% of India's national budget is allocated to law and justice — a structural underinvestment that technology alone cannot fix, but that technology can meaningfully address.
The Case for AI in Courts
The Print's analysis draws on the example of former Chief Justice DY Chandrachud's advocacy for technology adoption in Indian courts. The article argues that AI systems — when deployed responsibly, as decision-support tools rather than autonomous decision-makers — can dramatically improve judicial throughput without compromising the integrity of legal proceedings.
International models demonstrate the potential. Germany's IBM OLGA platform automates metadata extraction from case documents, reducing administrative burden on judges. China has piloted AI courts for small civil matters. Estonia is exploring AI for claims under €7,000. In each case, AI handles administrative and research functions, freeing human judges to focus on the decisions that require genuine legal reasoning and human judgment.
"Organisations such as IndikaAI's Nyaay are championing powerful use cases to advance the responsible use of AI in the judiciary."
Nyaay: Responsible AI for Justice
Indika AI's Nyaay platform is purpose-built for the Indian legal system. Rather than applying generic AI tools to legal contexts — an approach that frequently produces unreliable outputs — Nyaay is trained on Indian legal corpora, understands the structure of Indian case law, and is designed to support rather than replace human judicial decision-making.
The platform's capabilities include automated case scheduling and prioritisation, legal research assistance that identifies relevant precedents and statutes, document summarisation for lengthy filings, and case grouping to help courts manage similar matters efficiently. Each function is designed with human oversight as a core architectural principle — Nyaay provides recommendations and analysis, but final decisions remain with judges.
Safeguards and Responsible Deployment
The Print's analysis emphasises that AI adoption in courts must be accompanied by robust safeguards. Indika AI has built bias detection and mitigation into Nyaay's core architecture, recognising that AI systems trained on historical legal data may inadvertently encode historical inequities. Privacy protections for case participants, secure data handling, and transparent audit trails are non-negotiable requirements for any AI system operating in judicial contexts.
The article also raises the challenge of the digital divide: as courts adopt AI tools, access to justice must not become contingent on technological literacy. Nyaay's design addresses this by embedding within existing court workflows rather than requiring citizens to interact directly with AI systems.
About Nyaay and Indika AI
Nyaay is Indika AI's judicial AI platform, developed in collaboration with legal domain experts, practising advocates, and former members of the judiciary. It is part of Indika AI's broader portfolio of sector-specific AI products, which also includes RoadVision AI for infrastructure monitoring and DataStudio for enterprise AI data operations.