shiv, i think you are conflating two rather different types of crime, and
of criminals. on the one hand, you rightly state that india has a high
level of corruption, and the rich and powerful can get away with
crime. law enforcement is clearly soft on the rich and powerful. to claim
_from this alone_ that law enforcement is also too soft on possible terror
suspects is absurd. some rich and powerful people may be terrorists, but
most terrorists (and certainly most people suspected of terror) fit a
rather different profile.
At 05:14 06/09/2006, sastry wrote:
On the other hand Indian law enforcement agencies have consistently erred on
the side of allowing known criminal activity to go unpunished
yes, when suspects are the rich and powerful!
for terror suspects, or the less powerful in general, they err on the side
of rounding up the "usual suspects" - punishing innocence. none of the
300-odd mainly muslim people rounded up after the mumbai bombings were rich
and powerful, at least not as reported by the media. human rights abuses by
the police, despite guantanamo, are still far higher in india than in the
US (and this is widely documented).
certainly, when the suspects are not rich and powerful, as terror suspects
generally aren't, indian LEAs - and the indian legal system in general -
seems to err on the side of enthusiastically arresting, and abusing, "the
usual suspects".
i agree that indian LEAs should punish criminal activity and should be
freed from political interference in order to do so.
i totally disagree that indian LEAs should err on the side of punishing
innocents.
today, the dichotomy is that because of political interference to leave the
powerful alone, crime by the powerful goes unpunished, and _partly_ because
of political interference to "crack down" but ALSO because of low pay, lack
of motivation, ethnic or religious prejudice and the general power trip
common to LEAs world wide, a lot of powerless innocents get punished in the
name of fighting crime, catching terrorists, etc. the problem AT BOTH ENDS
is worse in india than in the west and you're really confusing two separate
problems which have two separate solutions.
-rishab
