Calcutta High Court has cracked the whip on its administrative section for keeping a woman convicted of murdering her husband waiting for 11 years — and counting — to get a hearing on her appeal.

Sujata Dutta, a 32-year-old Howrah homemaker, has not been granted a hearing yet because the “paper book” pertaining to her arrest and conviction by a trial court isn’t ready. The administrative section of the court was supposed to compile the book — comprising the case diary, details about the police investigation and the trial, and the judgement — within six months of receiving an order in 1998.

“This is intolerable. Such lapses cannot continue,” the division bench of Justice D.P. Sengupta and Justice S.K. Chakrabarti said on Friday.

The judges summoned the superintendent of the paper book section on Tuesday to explain why the relevant file hadn’t been compiled in 11 years.

According to Sujata’s lawyer Biswajit Manna, the delay had robbed his client — sentenced to life imprisonment — of more than a decade of her life. “She could have been free long ago,” he said.

Sujata’s appeal against the judgment is based on the contention that she was arrested and convicted of killing her husband Arun Dutta without it being established beyond doubt that he was murdered.

According to the case diary, Sujata had an argument with her husband at their rented house at Chatterjee Haat in Shibpur on January 4, 1993, after which Arun left home to live with his widowed mother in their ancestral house at Acharyapara. On the same day, Arun’s elder brother Banshi lodged a complaint with the police about his brother going missing. The police found his decomposed body three days later from under a sofa-cum-bed in the locked Chatterjee Haat house. The post-mortem report said Arun had died of poisoning.

Sujata was arrested along with Swapan Sarkar, a neighbour with whom she allegedly had an extra-marital relationship. “A sessions court held both guilty of murdering Arun and awarded them life terms in early 1998. They have been rotting in jail since,” lawyer Manna said.