Ek Ruka Hua Faisla

{{Infobox film

| name = Ek Ruka Hua Faisla

| image = Ek Ruka Hua Faisla.jpg

| alt = The image is a front-side view of DVD cover for film. It features eleven men at bottom around a round-table engaged in a discourse. At top the title of film appears, beside which there is face of another man.

| caption = DVD Cover

| director = Basu Chatterjee

| producer = Basu Chatterjee

| writer = Ranjit Kapur (dialogues)

| screenplay = {{ubl|Ranjit Kapur|Basu Chatterjee}}

| starring = See below

| music = Basu Chakravarti

| cinematography = Ajay Prabhakar

| editing = Kamal A. Sehgal

| distributor =

| released = {{film date|1986|||India}}

| runtime = 117 minutes

| country = India

| language = Hindi

| budget =

| gross =

}}

Ek Ruka Hua Faisla (English: A Pending Decision) is a 1986 Indian Hindi-language legal drama film directed by Basu Chatterjee.{{Cite web|date=Jun 4, 2020|title=Filmmaker Basu Chatterjee dies in Mumbai at 90|url=https://scroll.in/latest/963773/filmmaker-basu-chatterjee-dies-in-mumbai-at-93|access-date=2021-05-11|website=Scroll.in}} It is a remake of the Golden Bear winning American motion picture 12 Angry Men (1957){{Cite web|url=https://www.filmcompanion.in/features/bollywood-features/basu-chatterjees-gentle-middle-of-the-road-cinema-was-that-of-the-people-next-door-baradwaj-rangan/|title=Basu Chatterjee's Gentle, Middle-Of-The-Road Cinema Was That Of The People Next Door|first=Baradwaj|last=Rangan|date=4 June 2020|website=Film Companion}} directed by Sidney Lumet, which was an adaptation from a 1954 teleplay of the same name by Reginald Rose.Variety film review; 27 February 1957, page 6.Harrison's Reports film review; 2 March 1957, page 35.

Plot

The story begins in a courtroom where a teenage boy from a city slum is on trial for stabbing his father to death. Final closing arguments have been presented, and the judge then instructs the jury to decide whether the boy is guilty of murder, which carries a mandatory death sentence. Once inside the jury discussion room, it is immediately apparent that all jurors with the sole exception of juror Number 8 have already decided that the boy is guilty, and that they plan to return their verdict quickly, without taking time for discussion. His vote annoys the other jurors.

The rest of the film revolves around the jury's difficulty in reaching a unanimous verdict. While several of the jurors harbor personal prejudices, juror 8 maintains that the evidence presented in the case is circumstantial, and that the boy deserves fair deliberation. He calls into question the accuracy and reliability of the only two witnesses to the murder, the rarity of the murder weapon, and the overall questionable circumstances. He further argues that he cannot, in good conscience, vote guilty when he feels there is reasonable doubt of the boy's guilt and slowly convinces each juror about the same by his logical findings around each piece of evidence.