Judge, jury and executioner

The ‘encounter’ that ended the brief sojourn on this planet of four young men, including two minors, took place on November 19, 2019. On the outskirts of Hyderabad, a 26-year-old veterinary woman doctor was gangraped, murdered and her body burned. It was a heinous crime by all accounts and shocked the conscience of those who read about it in the newspapers the next morning.

In a country where the judicial system doesn’t function as it does in advanced countries, instant justice by the investigating agency is accepted, and even applauded.

The middle class feels threatened by such crimes. My 70-year-old mother felt unsafe when pavement dwellers were being killed by a lunatic who went round throwing heavy stones on their skulls while they slept. I told her that she was not a pavement dweller but to no avail. I was the police chief of Mumbai in those days. She thought I was being flippant!

The wheels of the judicial process system in the country grind slowly, too slowly for comfort. The political executive, the judiciary, the prosecuting agencies and the Bar can decide to speed up the trials of rape and murder cases, but the will is lacking. They prefer shortcuts, which sound ‘good’ but are uncivilised and certainly against the spirit of the law.

To let the police decide the guilt of the persons in custody and sentence them to death themselves, and then execute the sentence themselves, is unknown to civilised jurisprudence the world over. In the UP encounter that snuffed out the life of mafia don Vivek Dubey, everyone knew that the right person had been despatched. But in the Hyderabad case, later investigated by the Justice Sipurkar Commission, no evidence had been transmitted earlier to the general public to show that the four youths shot dead by the police were the real culprits!

What if even one of them was an innocent bystander? Many jobless youths while away their time for nothing better to do. The political and police leadership were both in a tearing hurry to establish their own ‘locus standi’ with the people.

True, they received a standing ovation and the police were showered with rose petals for their feat of delivering instant justice. Amnesty International’s India chapter had correctly concluded that there was public support for such fake encounters. The reason is not difficult to fathom. In a country where the judicial process system does not function as it does in advanced civilised and democratic countries, instant justice by the investigating agency is accepted, and even applauded by the middle class.

The danger inherent in conferring all powers — of investigating prosecuting and deciding guilt in one agency, the police, and then allowing them to execute the sentence like the jailor would — has been overlooked in the interest of public support. This support extends to the electoral arena and therefore is much sought after by political leaders. I have read statements by Chief Ministers and Home Ministers of different states, openly boasting that they have instructed ‘their’ police to engage such criminals on the streets and despatch them to the nether world.

The great popularity earned by Yogi Adityanath in UP, which resulted in his party’s re-election, was greatly due to his repeated orders to the police to rid the streets of UP’s cities of criminal elements. ‘His’ police undertook the task with great enthusiasm. They did not have to answer to anyone. Since no questions were asked, they graduated to another dangerous level altogether.

All scientific methods of investigation taught in police colleges are now not needed! If a person accused of the crime is a known offender or a budding criminal, that alone is sufficient to condemn him to death. That the poor, like the Muslims and Dalits, are disproportionately represented on the list of criminals makes no impression on an administration run by cynical officers for the privileged lot.

Let us not belittle our own intelligence. Investing the police with powers of investigator, prosecutor, judge and executioner, is fraught with great danger. Even that great police writer and scholar Prakash Singh, tracing the history of policing from ancient times, does not assign divine rights of life and death to the rulers of yore! And his is the most respected voice to be heard in police circles today.

The Bar is the biggest culprit for the delay in the disposal of criminal cases. Judges seem to be reluctant to lay down the law when it comes to pendency of cases. Adjournments are granted at the drop of the hat. In moments of exasperation, a judge somewhere in a high court, or even the Supreme Court, threatens to hear the case the next time round in case the lawyers for the prosecution or the defence fail to appear. But I doubt if the threat is ever carried out!

In my student days, murder and other sessions cases were heard on a day-to-day basis till the trial was completed and sentence delivered. Only Magistrates’ courts granted adjournments and even those were sparingly given. This is one crucial step that can easily be taken to put the judicial process back on track. There will be resistance from the Bar because lawyers earn adjournment fees, a small sum I admit, but that, too, adds up finally to lighten the litigants’ pockets.

On the distribution of work among government prosecutors I can’t comment because I do not know how it is done after the prosecution branch splits from the investigation arm in the police. The recent independence granted to prosecutors has resulted in runaway corruption. Each agency has found a convenient boy to whip and indulges in this pastime at the cost of truth. Perhaps, this is another aspect of the matter that needs to be fixed at the august gathering of grandees.

The police have improved investigation skills. Training has improved. It should have led to better results. That it has not, reflects on the deterioration of value systems that prize professional success at lower levels than illicit gain. The tendency of the political executive to ensure that the investigation agencies favour those aligned to them politically, even if they are the real culprits, would possibly be a taboo for discussion at the level of the grandees. But that too needs to be factored in by officials preparing their report on how they propose to guarantee the restoration of the rule of law in our ancient land.