http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/208648.html
FIFTH COLUMN Can we still call it justice? Tavleen Singh Posted online: Sunday, August 05, 2007 at 0000 hrs Tavleen Singh Such a pity that the sentencing of Sanjay Dutt hogged all headlines last week, or we may have noticed that it was a great week to observe the worrying pace at which the law takes its course in India. It moves with such geriatric slowness that we need to ask once more why chief justices come and chief justices go, committees come and committees go, and the Indian justice system continues to work at a pace that defeats the idea of justice. Some of the most important cases in Indian criminal history reached a climax last week and the shortest time it took for justice to be done in any of them was nine years. This was the case of the Coimbatore bombers who tried to bump off L.K. Advani on February 14, 1998. He was not the only target, and the 19 bombs that went off in synchronised blasts killed 58 people and left 200 injured. A special court was set up to the try the case based on a report by a special investigation team that was 17,000 pages long. Why should any report be that long? If it takes that long to say something there has to be a problem of articulation, and there is. The language of the Indian justice system is a mixture of Victorian English and Indian officialese. It has nothing to do with modern English and has so many hithertos, therebys and henceforwards thrown in that it would not surprise me if a competent sub-editor succeeded in reducing 17,000 pages to 700 or even 70. So the first problem is language. If the justice system cannot start functioning in comprehensible, concise English, then let it try doing so in Indian languages. Then should begin the process of tackling procedures. In these days of computers and digitalisation why should a judge need six months to deliver his judgement, as happened in the Bombay bomb blasts case? Has anything been done to modernise these archaic procedures? We need to know. Another case that was decided last week was that of the assassination of the chief minister of Punjab, Beant Singh, who was killed on August 31, 1995, by a suicide bomber named Dilawar Singh. Twelve years later Jagtar Singh Hawara and Balwant Singh have been sentenced to death for criminal conspiracy and murder. Can we stop here for a moment and think about the implications of it taking this long to sentence the killers of a major politician? If you or I or one of our loved ones was murdered in relative obscurity, how long would that case take? Forever? May I mention here that 20 years ago I registered a case against a DTC bus that rammed into the back of my humble Maruti 800 near the Hyatt Regency hotel in Delhi. I was shaken up but unhurt, so off I trotted to the nearest police station and registered a case. I have not heard a word about it so far. Around the same time my tiny office was broken into by some municipal thugs who started smashing it up before my eyes. It turned out they had no legal right to do this and were merely carrying out someone's vendetta against my landlord. I registered a case but have heard nothing about it since. Why should I expect to, when it takes 20 years for justice to begin to happen in the massacre of Dalits? Last week, a special court in Andhra Pradesh finally pronounced judgment in the massacre of Dalits in the village of Tsundur in Guntur district in 1991. Fifty-six upper caste killers were found guilty of murder and conspiracy. Great, but who remembers the case except the relatives of those who died? We have recently seen much melodrama about the supposed violation of Mohammad Haneef's human rights by the Australian government. Haneef was so exalted by the support he received from the Indian media that he returned to a hero's welcome with TV crews camping outside his Bangalore home to give us detailed coverage of his homecoming. Senior anchors went into hysterics over the violation of his fundamental rights, only to discover later that he may have known about his cousins' jihadi activities. He needs to praise Allah that he was arrested in Australia and not India. He could have spent years in jail before being allowed to hold a press conference, if you consider that nearly 80 per cent of those incarcerated in Indian jails are still under trial. Some are adolescents who remain in jail only because they are unable to pay Rs 500 for bail in cases of petty thefts. What hope can ordinary people have when it takes 15-20 years for terrorists to be punished? Is it not time that the chief justice of India gave us some answers?
