Ever since Plato and Xenophon failed to defend their master Socrates in 399 BC for heresy thus allowing 500 Athenians to judge him guilty and have him executed, justice per se, has been a negotiable instrument.
And the quality of the lawyers a major factor in the victory or defeat of the accused. Indian justice is pretty much as mystifying in a democracy and, being dealt in different measures, echoes Shelley’s verse: I have no hope nor health, nor peace within nor calm around. Cloned from a colonial past and cornered by sheer volume it has robbed most of the wretched and the lost the right to a speedy trial.
That it is elitist is not exactly a major surprise. In independent India since the day Maharashtra Gov. Vijayalakshmi Pandit “forgave” Commander Nanavati in 1962 for shooting his wife’s lover, justice has always been up for grabs and impacted upon by political expediency. Nanavati shot businessman Prem Ahuja with his service revolver and was sentenced to life after a two-year trial. A petition to pardon him was moved by a Sindhi leader Bhai Pratap who was himself in a bit of hot water. The government was under pressure to let the officer go free to maintain the morale of the armed forces. He was finally released and left for Canada in a case where guilt was eclipsed by high-octane emotional arm-twisting. Many others having committed the same sort of crime are still in jail, have been hanged or died in incarceration with no one doing them any reverence.
In the case of Salman Khan, we have a classic example of justice thwarted by the passage of time so that when a legal caveat is finally announced it sounds vindictive rather than the distilled result of litigation. The public has no recollection of the accident or a faint one at best. The collective mind is baffled that if the evidence is so startlingly clear 14 years later why was it not equally clear when the trial began and why has there been such inordinate delay getting these ducks in a row. The three tenets for not delaying justice are universal even though they are not applied with the equality one expects. To save the accused anxiety, to avoid long imprisonment as an undertrial and negate the possibility of the accused being exposed to time diminishing his mental and physical capabilities.
In Salman’s case, he fulfills the required parameters. Anxiety has been his partner for all these years. He has technically been an undertrial and it is not his fault he was allowed to continue living his lifestyle by the law. In category three, of course you are mentally and physically rubbed raw and exhausted by the sheer suspense of the unending case.
That the system has turned all three elements into confetti and made them almost caricatures in any adversarial process cannot be denied. The fear of contempt of court silences the individual. The legal fraternity does not speak up with one voice and demand a review in which “justice delayed is justice denied” is lifted from its clichéd roots and confronted. One cannot cavil over the right of Salman Khan to obtain instant bail. If there is a provision in law he has the right to use it. What one can express concern about (and should express) it is the inability to extend the same relief to a common man. Here lies the rub. The country does not really care about the thousands of powerless men and women (and minors) awaiting trial. It is seen as the luck of the draw. With a violent police force that engages in physical brutality for sport the poor seldom get their day in court. Ergo, the miscarriage of justice has already begun and once that vehicle starts its sooty journey there is nothing to stop it ramming the promised judicial process. We might make pious whistling sounds and whine a bit but it does not add up to a spit in the wind. If we admit that the large majority are marginalized and refused the protection promised by the judicial process then we more easily understand that perceptions of injustice will always prevail.
But before we get maudlin about those faceless millions spare a thought for the high profile who are often victims of their fame and pay the price for it. While they do obtain certain concessions they also are disqualified from any short cuts or plea bargains. Justice has to be seen to be done for a hungry media needing to feed its ghoulish masses and that mandate mangles the rights and privacies of the individual. Salman has been under the cloud for nearly 14 years. That is the extent of an official life sentence. In the case of Sanjay Dutt it was even longer before he was sentenced. The anguish of such a long “wait” is tangible.
In the Bhopal gas leak tragedy grandchildren were appearing on behalf their long dead grandparents in a third generation “hand the baton” trial that still ranks as a permanent stigma on the judicial process.
Even on the global yardstick Indian justice grinds so lowly that often the powder goes unnoticed. The Oscar Pistorius trial in South Africa began 11 months after he allegedly shot his girlfriend through a locked bathroom and the verdict was delivered soon after. Whether one agrees with the verdict or not is irrelevant to the process and the fact that it was completed expeditiously is what counts.
With India currently battling a wave of rapes the closest comparison one can make to the inability of the courts to handle the fallout is the racial assaults by police in the US. In both cases the prejudice is deep rooted, part of a mental makeup that defies common sense. The perpetrator justifies his conduct because it is filtered through contempt. What is known as the “Rodney King” syndrome in America is known as the “Nirbhaya” equation in India. Both cases have become symbolic for their genre of crime and political leaders have failed to rise to the occasion and support the innocent. King’s beating by four cops has been a forerunner to multiple such assaults on African-Americans. The Indian girl raped on the bus shocked a nation as more examples of ugly male chauvinism were exposed and continue to occur. The gross common factor is that there exists an element of “condoning the culprits” that defies every decent tenet but feeds on a profiling that just will not get beaten down. Prejudice that is part of a culture makes a mockery of law and the law far too often loses. What the Salman case must underscore is the need for speed. To make the verdict an associate of the accusation rather than a far too distant and disconnected cousin.
