‘A Lifelong Nightmare’: Seeking Justice in India’s Overwhelmed Courts

When the armed men stormed into the village of lower-caste Indians, fanning out through its dirt lanes and flinging open the doors of its mud homes, Binod Paswan jumped into a grain silo and peered out in horror.

Within hours, witnesses say, upper-caste landlords massacred 58 Dalits, people once known as “untouchables,” most of them farmworkers in the eastern state of Bihar who had been agitating for higher wages. Seven of them were members of Mr. Paswan’s family.

The next day, he lodged a police complaint, and investigators soon filed charges. That was 26 years ago. He is still waiting — after conflicting verdicts and hundreds of court hearings, with some witnesses now dead or impaired by fading eyesight — for a resolution.

“A cry for justice turned into a lifelong nightmare for us,” said Mr. Paswan, 45.

In a vast nation with no shortage of intractable problems, it is one of the longest-running and most far-reaching: India’s staggeringly overburdened judicial system.