Indians took to social media to describe the length of the “shocking” legal battle as “insanity” and to demand reform in a country where 173,000 court cases have been pending for over 20 years.

“The process itself is the punishment in India,” wrote one user on Twitter.

“Shame on [the] judiciary, the worst institution, which by refusing modernisation and reform, is the biggest stumbling block for progress,” echoed another.

Pre Covid-19, Indian courts only operated for four hours a day for 190 days a year, meaning the judicial system was unable to deal with the inflow of new cases in a country with a population of 1.38 billion.

The Law Commission of India has proposed reforms that would see an extension of daily hours and a reduction in holiday days but these are yet to be approved.

Furthermore, the Indian judicial system has staff shortages, with fewer than 14 judges per million people, and is blighted by corruption and delays in gathering evidence.

In the short term, this backlog is only expected to worsen as only “urgent” court hearings have been heard, over video-conferencing, since March due to Covid-19.