Justice reanimated

Earlier this week when those accused of the murder of Jessica Lall were acquitted, the nation reacted with a sense of shame and anger and an acute sense of helplessness.

Earlier this week when those accused of the murder of Jessica Lall were acquitted, the nation reacted with a sense of shame and anger and an acute sense of helplessness. Given the background of two of the accused, there was a feeling that it is easy for the rich and influential to manipulate the law, to obstruct justice and escape punishment. It was difficult to escape a sense of déjà vu because the situation was not too different from what happened in June 2003, when a Gujarat fast-track court acquitted the 21 people accused of murdering 14 Muslims in the Best Bakery case for lack of evidence. The key witnesses in this 2002 post-Godhra riots case had turned hostile. Here again was a clear-cut case of murder, and yet the system failed to deliver justice.

HT Image

The sentencing of nine of the accused to life imprisonment by the Mumbai sessions court today — where the Best Bakery retrial took place on the order of the Supreme Court — is thus more than a triumph of justice in this particular case. It has shown that courts need not feel confined by the limitations of law when the system is being blatantly abused; they can act in the interests of justice. This is important because work to provide justice for those killed in the Gujarat massacres has, in a sense, just begun. Just earlier this month, the Gujarat police had been forced to reopen as many as 1,594 post-Godhra massacre cases, following an inquiry by a committee constituted by the Supreme Court. Justice in India has increasingly become elusive, not only when the accused are influential. The venality of the police and prosecuting agencies perhaps plays a greater role. The Supreme Court obviously cannot be expected to step in each time there is a blatant miscarriage of justice — as in the earlier Best Bakery verdict — and order a retrial. But the knowledge that at least a few are being made to pay for their role in the 2002 carnage counts for a lot.

Perhaps by working out ways to institutionalise the precedent set by the Best Bakery case, the nation can create a system when justice will neither be delayed nor denied to anyone, regardless of caste, creed or wealth.