This refers to the article, “Move the wheels of justice” (December 7) by Deepak Sinha. There is always a financial roadblock for most Indians to properly defend a case in the court of law. This puts a big question mark over equality before the law or equal protection of laws within the territory of India, as enshrined in Article 14 of the Indian Constitution. The difference in quality of lawyers, who are to fight against each other in a law court, can cause tilting the balance of the objective scale the other way round by subjective factors, such as debating skills of the lawyers. legal aid cannot solve the problem as most established lawyers generally fight shy of joining a legal aid team for obvious reasons.
The only way out is to start a system of self-defence and to do away with the practice of lawyers’ defence on behalf of the party. Cross-examination can aptly be done by the judge himself. We need to directly speak to the judge or judges and submit papers in the same way we tell our doctors about our physical problems and furnish pathological test reports without having minimum knowledge of materia medica. It will uphold, to a greater extent, the ideals of justice, equality and fairplay in a land where most people find it difficult to sustain their families. Indeed, there are inadequate number judges at present to do the job. This will certainly stop justice being delayed, denied.