Travesty of Justice

Remember Manjunath Shanmugam, the IIML graduate and IOC officer who was murdered in cold blood by a petrol pump owner because he brought on them charges of corruption?

Yesterday he received another blow, this time from Indian Judicial system, a system so arcane and dismal that it cannot deliver justice in 5 years (and we all know cases normally drag on for a lifetime in Indian courts). Earlier in March 2007 district sessions judge (DSJ) Lakhimpur Kheri, S M A Abidi had given death sentence to the chief architect of the crime, Manu alias Pawan Mittal, and the rest of the gang were given life sentence. Honest people were relieved that there is still some sanity in judicial system.

But now in December 2009, the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court felt that the crime did not belong to the “rarest of the rare cases” and therefore does not justify death sentence, they commuted it to life imprisonment. Not only that, the high court has freed two of the accused. These guys will obviously flee justice.

Anybody familiar with Indian court and prison system knows that life sentence is nothing but a mockery, very often the perpetrator walks free after spending certain amount of time in jail, that period can be 10 to 14 years depending on his conduct. And a life sentence does not deter criminals and murderers because they know they can bribe and get away from jail, get a parole and start afresh. The very definition “rarest of rare” is at best vague and has been carefully designed by bureaucrats to give minimum number of death sentences. Then politicians make a further mockery of justice by giving parole to those accused of cold blooded murder (if these are influential and wealthy), and the person in parole goes to night club for partying (Manu Sharma, prime accused in the sensational Jessica Lal murder case was granted parole by none other than chief minister of Delhi, Sheila Dixit and he promptly went on partying).

Next in line is Supreme court, the case will drag on for few more years and perhaps the sentence will be further commuted because the judges will feel that the murderers have already spent considerable amount of time in jail. Couple of more accused will get freed.

So 5 years down the line, the honest people of India is still seeking justice which has been denied to them by Indian legislative, executive and now the judiciary.