We stand to lose the democratic dividend, and a lot more, if people do not see justice being done. Justice delayed is most definitely justice denied — for the accused, for the prosecutor, for the justice system, and for the country in general
In all the noise about a possible pardon for Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt, a different aspect of the recent final judgement of the 1993 Mumbai blasts case was forgotten. It has taken this case almost 20 years from the time the atrocity was committed to the time the Supreme Court finally weighed in on the matter. Twenty years! No matter what the colour of your political or social persuasion, this is an inordinate length of time.
So long, in fact, that it ought to make one seriously debate the state of the Indian judicial system. Instead, the debate is all about whether a 50-year old should go to jail or not because, according to one luminary, he has apparently reformed and ‘has a young family’. To that rather facile argument, one ought to point out that we just hanged a man who also had a young family. That did not stop anyone from hanging that man; and it should not be used as an excuse, as a ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card. The real world is not a game of Monopoly.
But this is not about the merits and demerits of this case and whether a man born into privilege should be pardoned or not. Those of us who were parts of debating clubs in school and college have debated the topic of delayed justice ad nauseum. It is a perennial favourite of teachers in charge of debating clubs.
Usually the argument for delayed justice always played out like this: Justice is justice, no matter how delayed. But when property cases, like the one involving author Salman Rushdie’s father, take close to 30 years, and criminal cases, including several rape cases, take over a decade, one seriously wonders if justice is being served. The huge delays in getting justice are eroding the very foundations of the justice system in India.
Not every person fighting a case has the immense bravery and perseverance of a Neelam Katara who, despite all the odds, has been seeking justice for the murder of her son Nitish. He was murdered 11 years ago in February 2002, and the case, although decided by a lower court, is still winding its way through the system. In most other countries, criminal justice does not take this long. This case should have been resolved years ago.
Of course, the fact remains that in the Nitish Katara case as well as in the Jessica lall murder case, there was an immense amount of pressure put on the system by the combined efforts of the print and television media. Pressure, without which, it is debatable if justice would have been done in the first place.
But, the seeming lethargy of the justice system is not just present in high-profile cases but also regular day-to-day cases. Why are there thousands upon thousands of undertrials languishing in jails for years, and in some obscene cases, for over a decadeIJ In a city like Delhi where the media plays an active role in highlighting certain cases, things sometimes do get speeded up. But why was there a clamour for ‘fast-track’ courtsIJ Only in India, do we have a system called ‘fast track’ or the tatkaal system for services. Is that a tacit admission that otherwise things in this country are ‘slow-track’IJ Asking a rape victim to relive the trauma of the incident 10 years after the incident is not fair on her.
A few months ago, this column looked at the issue of defamation cases and how even those cases take over a decade to solve. One may not feel sympathy for what Sanjay Dutt went through after he did something — and he did do something wrong — but to have a sword hanging over your head for 15 plus years goes against the grain of natural justice. He was lucky that, being privileged, he could sit out on bail for a large part of this time, get re-married and start a family again. But, as the saying goes in America, “Do the crime, pay the time.”
Of course, this has led to the very Indian concepts of ‘compromise’ and ‘settlements’; which are nothing more than out-of-court settlements which, more often than not, favour the more powerful and stronger person, and rarely provide justice. These are fine if you have a dented bumper at a red light and would want to avoid the headache of going to the police station and the court, but at the same time these also encourage corruption. Almost anybody you ask in Delhi, has paid off a traffic policeman because they want to avoid the court.
Mind you, no one wants to criticise the work done by our judges and public prosecutors. Very often, they are doing the best they can within a very flawed system. And this is a system that can be gamed by those who want to get away with murder, rape or even property. In some cases, the criminal, whom people know, and who might have well confessed to the crime in public, happily sits outside on bail, while cases stall for years. These criminals who ‘get away’ with cases then become local political leaders and often find themselves voted in as the representatives of the people at local, State or national levels.
Enacting more laws to keep ‘criminals’ out of the political system is not the solution to this ill, or to many of the others. There has to be recognition, particularly by the battery of lawyers who dominate Indian politics on almost every colour of the political system, that the system is broken. And this cannot be fixed by jugaad, another quintessentially Indian term for a quick-fix. The system of policing and justice in this country needs to be overhauled from the bottom up.
Recently, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, a likely prime ministerial candidate, spoke of the ‘Democratic Dividend’ of this country at the India Today Conclave. But the fact remains that we stand to lose that dividend, and a lot more, if people do not see justice being done. Justice delayed is most definitely justice denied — for the accused, for the prosecutor, for the justice system and for the country.