New Delhi, March 11 -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday emphasised that the constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial is meant not only to protect undertrials from indefinite incarceration but also to ensure timely justice for victims and their families, as it expressed concern over the prolonged pendency of criminal trials in Jammu and Kashmir. Hearing a matter relating to delays in a murder trial, a bench of the court said that it was "extremely disappointed" to learn that as many as 351 sessions trials, involving 585 accused people, in the UT have remained pending for more than five years. What particularly troubled the court was that most of these cases - 235 in all - are still stuck at the stage of recording oral evidence of prosecution witnesses, pointing to systemic delays. The court underlined that the right to a speedy trial, which flows from Article 21 of the Constitution, cannot be viewed narrowly as a safeguard only for the accused. "The whole idea in initiating this exercise is to ensure that undertrials do not languish in jail for an indefinite period of time. The victims also deserve speedy justice. Many times, we have observed that justice should not only be done to the accused person. Justice is also to be done to the victims and the kin and kith of the victims," the bench observed. The issue came up after the court last month granted bail to an accused in a murder case after noting that his trial had been pending for more than seven years and that the prosecution had managed to examine only seven witnesses during this period. "Why are you not able to produce the witnesses? Is it the failure of the investigating agency to produce witnesses that is causing the delay? We should should go to the root of the problem," it added....