The final legal verdict in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case has not been given yet but many people have decided what the truth is.
People who are not even aware of many crucial details of the case are dead sure about the reality. The law says that even a terrorist can’t be killed in a fake encounter. Some people believe that the encounter was indeed fake but justify it because they are sure that Ishrat was a terrorist. Others maintain that Ishrat was innocent and the encounter was fake and unjustifiable. What I find deeply disturbing in all these stands is that people form concrete opinions on an issue without even knowing the facts concerning it.
It is through the media that people get information on the Ishrat Jahan case. One, people should realise that the matter is still being investigated. Two, they should know that even the media does not have the full story. Three, they should also be aware that media coverage strays deliberately at times from the truth because media houses are guided by interests that prevent them from sticking to the truth. Apart from these factors, there is also the issue that people form steadfast conclusions without even bothering to be fully aware of the facts that have appeared in the media.
While the law of the land is taking its time to sort out the Ishrat Jahan case, many people have not only gone ahead and passed their judgement, they are so sure of themselves that they would hold their judgment correct even if the country’s law says tomorrow that it is wrong. And this judgment will be based on incorrect and inadequate information. Some painful truths emerge out of this scenario. like the people who crucified Jesus Christ, many people in India know not what they are doing. If a person knows not what he is doing, it means his level of awareness is dangerously low and his discrimination is grossly flawed. In their personal courts of justice, these people judge not on the basis of facts but deep-seated prejudices and biases, base emotions and unfounded pre-conceived ideas. They give reasons for having a particular stand, but these reasons themselves are not based on reason. These reasons are merely a crude, malformed pretext to justify their stand.
Take the case of people who think the killing of Ishrat is justified even if the encounter that took her life was fake. This stand is based on the belief that Ishrat was a terrorist. There is no reason to have this belief at present. But there is a whole bunch of arguments tinged with stark communalism that accompanies this untenable belief. Take a look at some of these arguments.
Thus they go, “People of a certain community have wrongly been protected for long by many politicians interested in securing their votes. This community breeds and shelters terrorists. A certain leader of another community is fit to fulfil his aspiration to be prime minister of the country because he is tough on the community of terrorists. Yes, Ishrat Jahan was killed illegally on his order, but it was the right thing to do because the legal process of the land is such that it might have allowed Ishrat to escape. Besides, there is no need to abide by the law when it comes to dealing with terrorists.”
Needless to say, these proclamations are not based on facts, are against the law and are outright inhuman. Then there is another group of people who take the opposite view. They say, “Ishrat was innocent. She was killed because a leader of a particular community wants to win the votes of his community by showing that unlike many leaders, he is tough with a rival community.”
In this case too, the judgement is not bothered about facts. The basic fact is that the truth in the Ishrat Jahan case is not out yet and the matter is being investigated. People who have delivered their own verdicts in the case do not trust the justice delivery system of the country. So they have not waited for the law of the land to deliver justice. And they judge without fully knowing the reality in the case. These are supposedly mature people with voting rights. They vote on the basis of flawed judgments. They are part of the masses that have been given the right by our Constitution to run the country by electing representatives to legislative bodies. It isn’t necessary to give them an identity because masses and mobs are faceless and nameless. These masses get herded hither and thither by their own fancies that have nothing to with the truth and reality. The country is in the hands of these masses.
People decide matters in their own personal courts because they do not trust the justice delivery system of the country. There are ample reasons for this lack of trust. There have been numerous instances of manipulation of the system. This lack of trust is unhealthy for our democracy. Justice often gets delayed in India. Even when justice is delivered, many people don’t believe in it. They come to their own judgement and go ahead and vote on its basis.
There is another issue related to justice delivery.
A person can fight an election if he is an accused in a serious case in which a verdict has not been given by any court. If the verdict has not come in the case, it is not known even by the court whether the person is guilty or innocent. And it takes decades at times for a case to run its full course till the highest court of the land. It can be safely presumed that the judges deciding a case know a lot more about it than the common people who are given the choice to vote in elections for an accused in the case. If the judges have not yet come to a conclusion in the case, then the people cannot be in a position to decide whether the accused is guilty or innocent.
And if the people cannot decide whether the accused is guilty or innocent, they will not be in a position to decide whether they should vote to make him a legislator in situations where the voting decision depends on the verdict. The voting decision might not depend on the verdict all the time, but it can be assumed that it will be good for democracy if it does most of the time. This point becomes crucial in cases where a conviction in a court can disqualify the accused from fighting elections.
Of course, it is valid to argue that a person cannot be denied his right to fight elections till a court verdict places a bar on him. But I think it is equally valid to argue that if a court has not decided whether a person can fight elections, the people should not be left to decide his fate in elections. At the centre of these arguments is the quality of the justice delivery system. As in many other issues, the solution of the problem is a big problem itself.