September 1
INDIA:
Delhi Police urges court to prosecute Tharoor for murder of Sunanda Pushkar
---- The former Union minister, who is currently on bail in the case, was
charged by Delhi Police under Sections 498-A and 306 of the Indian Penal Code
Delhi Police on Saturday urged a city court to prosecute Congress MP Shashi
Tharoor for abetment to suicide or "in alternative" on murder charge in the
case of death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar in 2014.
"Please frame sections 498-A(husband or his relative subjecting a woman to
cruelty), 306 (abetment of suicide) or in alternative 302 (murder) IPC against
the accused (Tharoor)," the probe agency told special judge Ajay Kumar Kuhar.
Senior public prosecutor Atul Srivastava made the submissions during arguments
on framing of charges in the case.
The former Union minister, who is currently on bail in the case, was charged by
Delhi Police under Sections 498-A and 306 of the Indian Penal Code.
Reading out a statement of the couple's domestics help, who is one of the
witnesses in the case, the prosecutor said that the couple had fight over a
girl named 'Katy' and some Blackberry messages.
The prosecutor said that before her death, Pushkar wanted to address a press
conference on the IPL issue and had said "I will not leave him (Tharoor)".
The witness had told police that 1 year prior to the demise, the couple used to
fight a lot.
The agency told the court that Pushkar was "distressed" and "felt betrayed" in
her marital life.
Police told the court that Pushkar was suffering from mental agony due to a
strained relationship with her husband. She had a scuffle with her husband and
had various injury marks few days before her death, they said.
Police accused Tharoor of torturing his wife which abetted her to commit
suicide.
The probe agency told the court that according to the post-mortem report, the
cause of Pushkar's death was poisoning and 15 injury marks were found on
various parts of her body, including in forearm, arms and legs.
The prosecutor further told the court that Tharoor's relation with Pakistani
journalist Mehr Tarar also added to Pushkar's mental agony.
The prosecutor also apprised the court about Pushkar's friend and journalist
Nalini Singh's statement, which is part of the charge sheet, that the relation
between the couple was tense and bad.
"She (Pushkar) told she helped Tharoor a lot in IPL matter. She had found some
messages between Tarar and Tharoor. She refused to go to their house and
instead went to Leela hotel. The relation between the couple was very bad,"
Singh had said in her statement.
Senior advocate Vikas Pahwa, appearing for Tharoor, refuted the submissions,
saying the arguments made by the prosecutor were contrary to the bare reading
of the charge sheet and the charges pressed by him were "absurd and
preposterous".
The case is now listed for the next hearing on October 17.
The case was earlier sent to the sessions court for further proceedings.
The maximum punishment for the offence listed in the charge sheet is 10 years
of imprisonment. However, if convicted for 302 (murder), the maximum punishment
is death penalty while the minimum is life imprisonment.
Pushkar's death had created a sensation as it came shortly after a bitter spat
between the couple on Twitter over his alleged affair with Tarar.
Pushkar, 51, was found dead in a suite of luxury hotel Leela in Delhi's
Chanakyapuri on the night of January 17, 2014.
The couple was staying at the hotel as the official bungalow of Tharoor was
being renovated at that time.
(source: business-standard.com)
CHINA:
Yang Hengjun: A Diplomatic Hostage
Diplomatic relations between Australia and China have become increasingly
antagonistic as Australian writer and political commentator, Yang Hengjun,
continues to be held by Chinese authorities. Earlier this week, attempts by the
Australian government to return Yang home failed as China formally charged the
pro-democracy advocate with “espionage.”
In response, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne has been
uncharacteristically frank in her remarks that Yang is not only being held in
“harsh” conditions but implied the grounds of the allegations were also
unfounded; “There is no basis for any allegation Dr Yang was spying for the
Australian government.” Senator Payne went on to state: “Most importantly that
if he is to be detained, that he is detained in accordance with the
expectations accorded to him through conventions in international law, and they
include access to lawyers, they include appropriate conditions of detention.”
Beijing’s response was equally strong-worded, with China’s Foreign Affairs
spokesman Geng Shuang rebuking that, “China deplores the Australian statement
on this case. I would like to reiterate that China is a country with rule of
law.”
In China, being found guilty of espionage can carry penalties anywhere from 3
years to the death penalty. Not only does Yang Hengjun face the possibility of
being found guilty of a capital offence on a vague charge but also, despite
what Chinese authorities have publicly stated, is experiencing poor conditions
of detainment without access to his lawyers or his family for the last 7 months
of investigation. Since his formal arrest last week, he has been allocated a
30-minute monthly meeting with Australian embassy staff, however, he is still
restricted from meeting lawyers or loved ones, and his wife has been banned
from leaving China.
An ongoing trial of wills, the detainment of Yang Hengjun for the ambiguous
charge of “committing espionage crimes” could very possibly define the
Sino-Australian relationship going forward, particularly since it coincides
with the persistent depression in diplomatic cooperation between Canberra and
Beijing. Despite being Australia’s largest exporter, the divergence in
political outlooks has placed the 2 countries on a collision course in which
the arrest of Yang, an Australian citizen and critic of the Chinese state,
could be the moment of impact.
To fully appreciate the importance of Yang’s formal arrest, it is important to
place it in a context of tit-for-tat diplomacy whereby primarily non-democratic
countries have been attempting to force their will by detaining or persecuting
foreign citizens. This “hostage diplomacy” has already occurred in the wake of
Meng Wenzhou’s arrest in Vancouver, which led to the retaliatory detainment of
Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor by the Chinese government.
A pro-democracy activist and former Chinese diplomat, the lack of proof
justifying the espionage accusation of Yang lead to one deduction: the arrest
of Yang is far more political than legal. Chen Yonglin, a former Chinese
diplomat himself who defected to Australia in 2005 stated: “It’s revenge…China
wants to save their image, and to show the Chinese (are) very much powerful and
influential enough to say no to a foreign Western hostile power.”
The Australian Director of the Human Rights Watch, Elaine Pearson also
expressed concern for the Chinese Government’s brazenness in an international
setting geared towards cooperation. China has warned Australia not to intervene
in the case and demands respect for its judicial sovereignty. In situations
like these, where the universalism of human rights, the duty of a nation to
protect its people and the right of a state to exercise sovereignty and protect
its security, expose the difficulty democratic states face when negotiating
with foreign and politically dissimilar countries. The solution will take time
and negotiation, however, in the short term, ANU security expert Rory Medcalf
recommended Australia change its travel advice to notify Australian citizens of
Chinese origin to use caution and be aware of the greater risk they take when
travelling to China.
The future for Yang Hengjun is uncertain, and the strategy Australia chooses to
adopt, whether it be appeasement or retaliation, will have long term
consequences for Sino-Australian cooperation for decades to come. In a
situation of strained relations over a range of issues including Huawei’s ban,
Chinese espionage allegations and military expansion in the South China Sea,
the arrest of Yang is more than an attempt to protect national security by the
Chinese government. The arrest of Yang is more so a political signal that the
Chinese Communist Party will enforce authority and penalty against critics of
the Chinese state, particularly those of Chinese origin.
(source: The Organization for World Peace)
PAKISTAN:
Policeman’s murderer convicted
An Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) has awarded death sentence to an accused in
murder of a policeman.
According to the police, Raheel along with co-accused opened fire at the
policemen deployed for the patrolling at Aram Bagh area in which a policeman,
Noman, was killed on the spot while another policeman Suhail got injured.
The court awarded him capital punishment and 22 years of imprisonment when he
was proven guilty on charges of encounter with police, killing of a policeman
and possessing illegal arms.
(source: The Express Tribune)
*********
Righting wrongs
MONTESQUIEU, a French legal jurist and philosopher, once wrote in The Spirit of
the Laws: “There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the
shield of the law and in the name of justice.” In Pakistan, for the victims of
wrongful convictions, nothing would ring more true.
In the well-known Mazhar Hussain case, a man falsely convicted for murder spent
13 years on death row before he was acquitted by the Supreme Court for all
charges. Unfortunately, he was acquitted two years after he had already died in
jail. In 2017, a man falsely accused in a blasphemy case was acquitted from a
life sentence by the Supreme Court after spending 9 years in jail. When the
Supreme Court released him, he was let go with a mere apology. Most recently,
in 2018, the Supreme Court acquitted a 21-year-old man who was falsely
convicted for trafficking drugs when he was just a 10-year-old boy. After
spending more than a decade in terrible prison conditions, he was released — by
then fatally afflicted with tuberculosis.
One could forgive such horrifying incidents of maladministration of justice and
wrongful convictions if they were outliers of an otherwise efficient criminal
justice system. However, among the legal community such stories are neither
shocking nor outliers. They are the norm.
As per a recently launched report by the Foundation of Fundamental Rights (FFR)
and Reprieve, which conducted a detailed analysis of Supreme Court judgements
on death penalty appeals from 2010 to 2018, it has come to light that 39 per
cent of all capital cases end in complete acquittal. However, the average time
spent by innocent persons in jail, convicted on death row, until they are
acquitted by the Supreme Court on appeal is a shocking 10 years. In fact, one
in every 10 wrongfully convicted death row inmates must wait more than 15 years
before he or she is released!
Over1/3 of death row appeals end in complete acquittal.
This means that in Pakistan, averagely, over one third of the prison population
convicted and sentenced to the death penalty is comprised of innocent people,
all of whom will eventually be acquitted, but not until they have wasted 10 to
15 years of their lives in an overcrowded and poorly managed jail, waiting for
justice to be done.
Victims of wrongful convictions lose valuable time and reputation, face
stigmatisation, as well as suffer significant economic harm – and it is well
known that the more time lost behind bars always equals to more damage suffered
by a victim. Therefore, upon release, it should be the duty of the government
under the principle of ‘ubi jus, ibi remedium’ to make the person whole for the
loss they have suffered for every hour of every day they have wrongly spent in
jail so that they may be able to readjust back into society and rebuild their
lives. This is why many states in the world, along with improving their
criminal justice systems, have enacted legislation to provide just compensation
for the innocents they jail.
A system of providing financial compensation to the wrongfully convicted also
acts as a powerful financial deterrent against the state from wrongfully
convicting its own citizens. It does this by ensuring that the state does not
overzealously prosecute persons who might be innocent and ensuring that
criminal investigations and prosecutions are comprehensive. Furthermore, it
encourages governments to fund legal reforms more proactively so as to avoid
financial liabilities. Most importantly, courts are also mindful of providing
every citizen a fair opportunity of defence before conviction. Overall, such
legislation produces accountability for one of the most restrictive powers of
the state: the power to restrain the liberty of its citizens.
Given that the number of wrongful convictions is very high and the average time
of acquittal is also excessively lengthy, it is the need of the hour for
Pakistan to also enact legislation that provides for some recompense to those
who have had their liberty unjustly snatched away by the state. One would hope
that the current government would take initiative and promulgate a law that
provides financial compensation to the wrongfully convicted in Pakistan by
reimbursing them for all court and attorney fees they spend fighting their
conviction, along with an annual allowance for each year that they spent
wrongfully incarcerated; factoring in their loss of income along with any
reputational harm as well.
This is the least we must do to meet with the constitutional promise set out by
Article 4 and Article 9 of the Constitution; that no action detrimental to the
right of liberty of a citizen shall be taken except in strict accordance of the
law, lest the shield of the law and the name of justice in Pakistan becomes
synonymous with ‘tyranny’ to those innocents who toil away in jail, waiting to
be vindicated.
(source: Omer Malik; The writer is a human rights lawyer working at the Law and
Policy Chambers in Islamabad----dawn.com)
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