-Sudheendra Kulkarni
‘Justice delayed is justice denied’ is an aphorism most of us learnt in our school days. “Tarikh pe tarikh” (‘date after date’) is a synonymous but more colloquial axiom familiar to all harassed and frustrated citizens seeking justice in India’s courts, which postpone case hearings habitually and almost interminably.
The judicial system of our country is globally notorious for delay in justice delivery. According to official data (March 2022), 47 million cases are pending in the country’s courts — 70,154 in the Supreme Court, 5.89 million cases in 25 high courts, and the remaining in lower courts. Of them, 10 million cases are pending for over five years, and 76 percent of the country’s prisoners are unconvicted undertrials awaiting adjudication of their cases. In April, a court in Bihar acquitted a murder case accused after he had spent 28 years in jail. In May, another citizen was acquitted in a murder case by a Madhya Pradesh court after suffering wrongful incarceration for 13 years. These facts and figures make a mockery of our criminal justice system. It would be neither inaccurate nor inappropriate to call it a justice system that is criminal.
But the recent outcome of Bilkis Bano’s case in Gujarat is an altogether more hideous injustice. It is perversion of justice in a case involving two heinous crimes committed simultaneously — gang-rape and multiple murders.
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Bilkis was a victim of gang-rape in an assault by a Hindu mob that also murdered 14 members of her family including her three-year-old daughter, during the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat. She was then 19 years of age and pregnant with her second child. The culprits were arrested two years later in 2004, and only because a set of brave and determined human rights activists doggedly prosecuted her case. The Supreme Court agreed with them that communally biased courts in Gujarat would not deliver justice to her and transferred the hearing to Mumbai.
Consider this: if the gang rapists and murderers were Muslim and the hapless victim was a Hindu woman, would the BJP government of Gujarat have released the convicts by remitting their life sentences?
After a prolonged and life-threatening fight for justice during which Bilkis received numerous death threats, 11 of the assailants were convicted in 2008 and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, in a bizarre and perhaps premeditated coincidence, the Gujarat government granted them pardon on August 15, just as prime minister Narendra Modi in an address to the nation from the ramparts of Red Fort, Delhi on India’s 75th Independence Day, exhorted the citizenry to “respect women”. On that very day these convicts walked free from Godhra jail. Subsequently, they were felicitated with garlands by sympathisers.
The Gujarat government granted remission of life sentence to them on the ground that the convicts had completed 14 years and five months of their sentence and had shown “good behaviour” in prison. Unsurprisingly, this bizarre decision has drawn strong condemnation across India and globally. Writ petitions have been filed challenging this decision, and the Supreme Court has asked the state government to show cause. Predictably, the state government has justified its action on technical grounds. The apex court, however, must view this matter from the perspective of both legality and constitutional morality.
Moreover, the matter does not concern only the Supreme Court. What about the prime minister? In his Independence Day address to the nation, he said: “I have one request for every Indian. Can we change the mentality towards our women? Nari shakti will play a vital role in fulfilling the dreams of India. Respect for women is an important pillar for India’s growth. We need to support our nari shakti.” What he said next has a direct bearing on the Bilkis Bano matter. “A vikruti (distortion) has crept in our conduct and we at times insult women. Can we take a pledge to get rid of this in our behaviour that humiliates women in everyday life?”
The prime minister’s exhortation is unimpeachable. Indian society and men in particular, must respect the dignity and security of women, irrespective of their class, caste or creed. Article 15 of the Constitution prohibits discrimination based on sex, caste, religion, and place of birth. But when we view the Gujarat government’s decision through the prism of Modi’s moralising and the Constitution’s mandate, the contrast is damning. Consider this: If the gang-rapists and murderers were Muslim, and the hapless victim was a Hindu woman, would the BJP government of Gujarat have released these convicts by remitting their life sentences?
It is perhaps too much to expect that Modi, who was chief minister of Gujarat at the time of the horrific communal violence of 2002, will ask his own party’s government in the state to review its decision. But the justice-loving people of India, irrespective of political and religious backgrounds, have high expectations from the Supreme Court. It must heed the call of the nation’s outraged collective conscience.
(Sudheendra Kulkarni was an aide of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1999-2004) and is currently the Mumbai-based founder of Forum for South Asia)
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