Civil Court Ghodegaon: 15 Judges Across 20,019 Cases Audited

# Civil Court Ghodegaon: 15 Judges Across 20,019 Cases Audited This report is produced by Judge My Lawyer, India's legal analytics platform, based on an analysis of 20,019 cases filed before Civil Court, Ghodegaon. Case-level data was sourced directly from the court's publicly accessible case management portal. The dataset spans filing dates from March 1964 through April 2026, covers 15 judges who each handled 30 or more cases under their canonical name, and captures outcomes, durations, and lawyer appearances across criminal and civil matters spanning six decades. The average contested case at Civil Court, Ghodegaon that reaches a conclusion takes 1,480 days — roughly four years. There is no single statutory deadline governing all proceedings before a civil and criminal court of this type, but Indian courts operate under the Constitutional guarantee of speedy trial and the Civil Procedure Code's mandate to avoid unnecessary delay. Four years is, by any measure, a long wait. For the 6,323 cases still open as of April 2026 — 31.6% of everything filed — the wait is not over. Some of those cases have been sitting without a final order for well over a decade. A small but significant cohort has been pending for more than five years, and in at least one recorded instance a Darkhast (execution of decree) matter has been alive in the records for 30 years. These are not administrative footnotes. Each open file is a litigant who cannot move on. ---

The Full Scorecard: All 15 Adjudicators

Three judges — M. A. K. Shaikh at 93.2%, N. N. Patil at 92.9%, and S. A. Mulik at 91.1% — account for the court's strongest disposal records. By contrast, Sneha Sunil Pulujkar at 64.5% and Avinash M. Patil at 64.9% sit more than 25 percentage points below the top performers, with 320 and 141 cases respectively still open. The disposal rate number, however, obscures something important about how cases close. Settlement rates range from 6.9% under N. N. Patil to 32.0% under S. N. Hurgat, which means that two judges with comparable disposal rates are resolving matters in structurally different ways. Hurgat's bench produces three times as many settlements as Patil's — a difference that has concrete implications for how reliably those outcomes are enforced. Court-wide, the respondent (defendant) side wins 65.7% of all contested disposed cases in which a winner is recorded. The petitioner side — combining "In favor of Petitioner" and "In favor of Complainant" outcomes — wins 34.3%. Against that baseline, N. N. Patil (58.1% petitioner win rate) and S. K. Birajdar (50.9%) are outliers in favour of the litigant who brought the case to court. Santosh L. Vaidya's 18.4% petitioner win rate and S. A. Mulik's 25.7% sit on the opposite end, with the respondent side winning more than three-quarters of contested matters on those benches. ---

The Backlog Crisis

The raw count of pending cases tells one story; the average age of those pending files tells another. Sneha Sunil Pulujkar carries the largest pending docket at 320 cases, but the average age of those files is 10 days — she is the court's currently active sitting judge, with freshly filed matters recorded against her name. The more alarming pendency figures belong to M. A. K. Shaikh and Bhanupratap Chouhan. Shaikh's pending matters average 4,879 days — over 13 years — with two cases exceeding five years. Chouhan's pending average is 2,108 days, with one case older than five years. S. A. Mulik's pending files average 1,903 days, with a single case also crossing the five-year threshold. These are cases that survived every deadline, every adjournment cycle, and every posting order, and have never received a final ruling. ---

Judge-by-Judge: The Full Profile

S. A. Mulik — 1,304 Cases | 1986–2022

**At a glance:** **Case type breakdown:** **Top petitioner-side lawyers:** S. A. Mulik's docket is predominantly criminal. Summary Criminal Cases and general CRIMINAL matters together account for 907 of his 1,304 cases. His 946-day average resolution is the second-fastest among the top five judges by caseload, but the figure masks significant variation: Criminal Miscellaneous Applications take an average of 2,088 days to close, and Regular Criminal Cases average 2,764 days — nearly eight years — before a ruling. His settlement rate of 29.8% is the second-highest among the 15 judges, suggesting a bench where a substantial minority of matters are resolved by consent rather than adjudication. **The Anomaly:** Outcome-pending data shows 27 cases recorded as "In favor of Respondent" that still carry no closed status — a status-outcome mismatch that may reflect delayed order recording, interim relief entries, or data-entry inconsistencies. In addition, 17 cases are recorded as "Settled" with the case still showing open. S. R. Pacharne had 49 appearances before this bench and a 4.1% win rate — meaning 95.9% of his contested matters ended in favour of the respondent. With 49 cases this pattern is statistically significant. ---

M. A. K. Shaikh — 1,299 Cases | 1966–2024

**At a glance:** **Case type breakdown:** **Top petitioner-side lawyers:** M. A. K. Shaikh's 1,299 cases span the longest recorded window of any judge in this dataset — from June 1966 to May 2024, nearly six decades. His criminal disposal rates are among the best in the court: 94.6% of general CRIMINAL matters closed, 97.8% of Regular Criminal Cases resolved. But his Regular Civil Suits take an average of 3,736 days — more than 10 years — per closed matter, the longest civil suit average in the entire court. **The Concern:** Two pending cases before Shaikh's bench average 4,879 days open — 13.4 years. Seven cases are recorded as "Settled" but carry an open status; another seven State of Maharashtra cases fall in the same anomaly category. H. M. Badgujar appeared 21 times before this bench and won zero contested decisions. N. B. Adagale, with 17 appearances, also won zero. S. R. Pacharne had 49 appearances and a 4.3% win rate — a near-identical pattern to what records show before S. A. Mulik's bench. ---

Sneha Sunil Pulujkar — 901 Cases | 2001–2026

**At a glance:** **Case type breakdown:** **Top petitioner-side lawyers:** Sneha Sunil Pulujkar is the court's current sitting judge. Her disposed caseload shows wide divergence by case type: Regular Civil Suits close at 88.8% with a 1,248-day average, while general CIVIL and PROPERTY categories show disposal rates of 31.4% and 42.6% respectively — the majority of cases in those categories remain unresolved. P. S. Walke and P. S. Walake are almost certainly the same advocate recorded under two spellings; combined, their 102 appearances produce a blended win rate near 25%. N. R. Nighot, with 23 appearances and a 60.0% win rate, represents the highest single-lawyer petitioner win rate before Pulujkar's bench. ---

M. S. Mali — 866 Cases | 1982–2025

**At a glance:** **Case type breakdown:** **Top petitioner-side lawyers:** M. S. Mali's 46.7% petitioner win rate is the third-highest in the 15-bench scorecard and the highest among the top five judges by caseload. Before this bench, petitioners win nearly one in two contested decisions, against a court-wide average of 34.3%. The 86 State of Maharashtra cases before Mali show a petitioner win rate of approximately 43% — notably higher than what comparable matters show before Mulik or Shaikh. **The Concern:** A name-variant entry "Smt. M. S. Mali" shows one pending case with an average age of 11,136 days — 30.5 years. This is the single longest-running open matter attributable to any name variant in the dataset. Whether it represents a genuine decades-old unresolved case or a data artefact cannot be determined from the public record alone. S. R. Pacharne appeared 52 times before Mali's bench and won zero contested decisions. ---

Santosh L. Vaidya — 784 Cases | 2003–2026

**At a glance:** **Case type breakdown:** **Top petitioner-side lawyers:** Santosh L. Vaidya's 18.4% petitioner win rate is the lowest of any judge in the 15-bench scorecard. On this bench, respondents win more than 80% of contested non-settled cases. His CIVIL category has disposed of only 29 of 67 cases (43.3%); PROPERTY matters stand at 33.3% disposed. State of Maharashtra cases before his bench average 8,834 days — over 24 years — though this figure likely reflects very old inherited matters. S. R. Pacharne appeared 34 times before Vaidya and won zero contested decisions. ---

P. C. Ramdin — 736 Cases | 1992–2020

**At a glance:** **Case type breakdown:** P. C. Ramdin produced a 999-day average resolution and a 9.7% settlement rate — the lowest of any judge in the table. That combination indicates a bench oriented toward adjudicated decisions rather than consent outcomes. State of Maharashtra cases before Ramdin resolved in only 237 days on average, with petitioners winning 19 of 20 non-settled decisions — a stark departure from the court-wide pattern. This bench is among the most efficient in the dataset. ---

V. I. Shaikh — 651 Cases | 1989–2024

**At a glance:** **Case type breakdown:** **Top petitioner-side lawyers:** **The Darkhast Anomaly:** V. I. Shaikh's overall 2,258-day average is the third-longest in the court. Within his docket, Darkhast proceedings — execution of court decrees — average 10,962 days, or 30 years. An average of 30 years to close an enforcement proceeding means that winning a judgment and receiving the fruits of that judgment are separated by three decades. There are 23 closed Darkhast matters at that average, with 2 still pending. A. S. Borse appeared 22 times before Shaikh and won zero contested decisions. ---

Bhanupratap Chouhan — 576 Cases | 1993–2019

**At a glance:** **Case type breakdown:** Bhanupratap Chouhan's 2,054-day average resolution is the second-longest in the court. His Criminal Miscellaneous Applications — 192 cases — close at 94.3% but take an average of 2,240 days. His 28 Matrimonial cases are entirely disposed. State of Maharashtra cases before his bench averaged 1,800 days, with petitioners winning 38 of 60 contested decisions — a 63.3% petitioner win rate against State, the highest of any major judge for that respondent type. Two pending cases are more than three years old, with one crossing five years. ---

N. D. Meshram — 471 Cases | 1992–2023

**At a glance:** **Case type breakdown:** **Top petitioner-side lawyers:** N. D. Meshram's 826-day average resolution is the second-fastest in the court, behind only S. K. Birajdar. His Criminal Miscellaneous Applications close in an average of 196 days — under seven months. His petitioner win rate of 48.1% is the second-highest among all 15 judges. Of the major judges, Meshram most consistently produces fast, petitioner-favourable results: speed and outcome move in the same direction on this bench. ---

Avinash M. Patil — 402 Cases | 1999–2026

**At a glance:** **Case type breakdown:** **Top petitioner-side lawyers:** Avinash M. Patil's Regular Civil Suits take an average of 4,102 days to close — more than 11 years, the longest civil suit average in the entire court. His CIVIL category has a 22.5% disposal rate, with 55 cases still open. S. M. Chinchawade and S. M. Chinchwade are almost certainly the same advocate recorded under two spellings; combined, their 38 appearances produced 1 win — a 2.6% effective win rate before this bench. ---

Remaining Judges — Summary Profiles

**S. N. Hurgat (377 cases, 2007–2025):** An 82.0% disposal rate with a 32.0% settlement rate — the highest settlement rate in the court. Hurgat's bench resolves one in three disposed cases by consent, compared to the court average of approximately 22%. Where other judges drive contested decisions, Hurgat's caseload trends toward negotiated outcomes. His 1,018-day resolution average is among the faster benches in the dataset. **Hamid J. Pathan (342 cases, 1998–2021):** A 79.8% disposal rate and a 2,207-day average resolution. His 41.3% petitioner win rate is above average. The 54 State of Maharashtra cases before him averaged 6,713 days — over 18 years — with petitioners winning 25 of 39 contested decisions. Cases involving State as respondent before this bench appear to have been systematically long-running matters, possibly older civil challenge proceedings filed against government action. **N. N. Patil (312 cases, 1994–2018):** The court's second-highest disposal rate at 92.9%, a 997-day average, and the highest petitioner win rate in the entire dataset at 58.1%. His settlement rate of 6.9% is the lowest of any judge — on this bench, almost every case goes to a decided outcome rather than a consent order, and petitioners win more than they lose. This is the only bench in the court where the petitioner side can expect a better-than-even chance in a contested hearing. **B. D. Chokhat (292 cases, 2003–2023):** The longest average resolution of any judge in the court at 2,295 days. His disposal rate of 91.1% is strong, but cases take an average of 6.3 years to close. At 35.9% petitioner win rate, petitioners fare slightly above the court-wide average before this bench — the long duration does not translate into a proportional respondent advantage. **S. K. Birajdar (262 cases, 2009–2021):** The fastest judge in the court at 413 days average resolution — under 14 months — with a 50.9% petitioner win rate, the second-highest in the dataset. His 27.6% settlement rate sits above average. On every metric that matters to a petitioner — speed, outcome probability — Birajdar's bench produced the best numbers in the court during his tenure. ---

The Settlement Mirage

Across all judges, the settlement-pending anomaly data flags cases where the recorded outcome is "Settled" but the status field carries no closed indicator, leaving the case technically open. S. A. Mulik has 17 such entries, M. A. K. Shaikh has 7 (plus additional entries under name variants), and Hamid J. Pathan, N. D. Meshram, and Santosh L. Vaidya each have 5. Multiple entries involve the State of Maharashtra as respondent under M. A. K. Shaikh's, V. I. Shaikh's, and Bhanupratap Chouhan's benches. A settlement that has not been formally closed in the court record provides no enforceable, status-confirmed closure. The court's own data describes these matters as simultaneously resolved and open — a contradiction that reflects either a lag in administrative order recording, an interim settlement pending final decree, or a data-entry gap. The combined count of these anomalous records across all judges exceeds 100 entries when all name variants are included. Any litigant who settled a matter before these benches should verify that the matter carries a closed status in the court's own records. ---

The Respondent Lawyer Duration Effect

The respondent-side bar at Civil Court, Ghodegaon is dominated by the Pokharkar family — B. S. Pokharkar, V. B. Pokharkar, A. G. Pokharkar, and H. B. Pokharkar — whose combined appearances across name variants total more than 230 cases and whose respondent win rates range from 72.2% to 91.7%. In cases where a Pokharkar appears for the respondent side, the respondent wins more than seven times out of ten, and in some name variants more than nine times out of ten. A. G. Pokharkar's 45 cases average 2,535 days per case — nearly seven years. B.S. Pokharkar (recorded without space, a data variant of the same name) averaged 3,783 days across 15 cases, the longest average in the table. S. H. Chilekar's 91.7% respondent win rate across 27 cases and N.R. Nighot's 88.9% across 20 respondent-side cases are the highest among counsel with at least 15 appearances on that side. Clients represented by any of these lawyers to defend before this court have historically secured respondent-favourable outcomes in seven to nine out of every ten contested matters. ---

Respondents That Win Systematically

Court-wide respondent win rate: **65.7%**. Court-wide average disposal duration: **1,480 days**. Several bench-respondent pairings significantly exceed the 65.7% court baseline. Before N. N. Patil, the State of Maharashtra as respondent won 82.8% of contested decisions at an average of only 299 days — fast and respondent-favourable. Before V. I. Shaikh, "Accused" parties prevailed in 76.9% of decisions across 31 cases averaging 4,424 days — over 12 years per case. The generic "Respondent" category before Bhanupratap Chouhan won 82.1% of decisions at an average case length of 3,107 days. These combinations — high respondent win rates with above-average durations — represent the highest-friction zone for petitioners in this court. ---

What the Data Means

The court does dispose of the majority of its cases — 68.4% — but the average time to disposal is 1,480 days. A litigant who files today should expect, on the basis of historical performance, to wait roughly four years before any decision. That average conceals a range from S. K. Birajdar's 413 days to B. D. Chokhat's 2,295 days and V. I. Shaikh's 2,258 days. A case that lands before a Birajdar-type bench has a fundamentally different trajectory than one before a Chokhat or Shaikh bench, and there is nothing in the filing process that guarantees any particular assignment. The petitioner win rate of 34.3% court-wide is a structural feature, not a transient result. Respondents have won 65.7% of contested matters across 20,019 cases spanning six decades. The two judges who departed most significantly from that pattern — N. N. Patil at 58.1% and S. K. Birajdar at 50.9% — are no longer recorded as active in the dataset, with last case dates of 2018 and 2021 respectively. The currently active benches, including Santosh L. Vaidya at 18.4% and Sneha Sunil Pulujkar at 22.7%, bracket the lower end of the petitioner-win spectrum; M. S. Mali at 46.7% is the strongest among currently active judges. The settlement rate of 22% court-wide, combined with over 100 settlement-pending anomaly records, raises questions about how many consent resolutions have been formally closed in the system. A settlement recorded in outcome but not reflected in case status is invisible to any enforcement mechanism that relies on status confirmation. Litigants who settled matters before benches with high anomaly counts — S. A. Mulik at 17, M. A. K. Shaikh at 14 across name variants — should verify that their matter carries a closed status in the court's own records. The Darkhast average of 10,962 days before V. I. Shaikh illustrates the gap between winning and receiving. Execution proceedings in Indian courts are separate from the original suit; they require fresh filings and fresh hearings. An average of 30 years to close an execution proceeding means that a decree won in one generation may only be enforced — or abandoned — in the next. This is not a fringe finding; 23 Darkhast matters closed at that average before a single judge's bench. The concentration of respondent-side representation among the Pokharkar family advocates — B. S. Pokharkar, V. B. Pokharkar, A. G. Pokharkar, and H. B. Pokharkar — with combined win rates consistently above 80%, reflects a genuinely dominant practice before this court. Whether that dominance reflects local expertise, specialisation, or the nature of the matters those lawyers take on cannot be determined from case records alone. What can be said is that across more than 230 combined appearances, a respondent represented by any member of this group won more than eight in ten contested decisions. ---

About the Data and Methodology

All 20,019 case records were retrieved from Civil Court, Ghodegaon's publicly accessible case management portal and processed through Judge My Lawyer's analytics pipeline. Processing involved: adjudicator name consolidation (multiple spellings of the same judge's name — including Devanagari and Roman transliterations — were counted separately in aggregate queries but treated under canonical names in per-judge profiles); duration correction (zero-duration filings excluded from averages); outcome standardisation (variants normalised across "In favor of Petitioner," "In favor of Complainant," "In favor of Respondent," and "Settled" categories); and status-outcome separation (this court uses a non-standard status vocabulary — including null for open cases and "Complaint disposed," "DISPOSED," "Settlement," "Withdrawn," and "Complaint rejected" for closed matters — rather than standard pending/disposed labels; null status was treated as pending for analytical purposes). Petitioner win rates throughout exclude settled matters. All figures are subject to the completeness and accuracy of the court's own record-keeping. ---

Disclaimer

The findings in this report are based entirely on publicly available court records and reflect those records as of April 2026. Statistical patterns identified describe empirical regularities in the data as recorded. They do not constitute allegations of bias, partiality, misconduct, or wrongdoing against any adjudicator, advocate, respondent, or institution. Anomalies noted may reflect administrative recording conventions, interim order documentation practices, data-entry inconsistencies, or procedural factors not visible in the public record. Duration figures for name-variant entries may reflect cases across multiple judicial tenures or administrative periods. This report is published for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.