The complete and absymal failure of the criminal justice system to deliver justice

Sometimes back I wrote a piece on the rottenness of the criminal justice system in our country. Today, I am numbed by the extent of the rottenness. The Supreme Court of India has failed the citizens of India yet again, by denying justice to a four year old girl and her parents, by commuting the death sentence of a rapist murderer. And the panel included one woman judge. 

The sheer hypocrisy is evident from the process of delivering justice, more than the outcome. If the judges deliver justice by quoting literature, how different is the Supreme Court from the sharia courts that deliver justice by quoting scriptures? Atleast those sharia judges believe their scriptures. Fundamentally there is no difference. The reason for outrage is the absolute lack of scientific rigour in the process of delivering justice. Forget about the fact that the judgement did not take into account the fate of the innocent victim, how brutally she was raped and killed. Forget even the fact that the insensitive "your honours" overlooked the suffering, the agony, the grief of the parents. Did they deliver the justice on the basis of any facts, any data? Did they take help from sociologists to run a controlled experiment whereby the perpetrator was given a chance to do good work in the society and watched over a period of time - longitudinal study, to conclude that he had reformed? On what basis did they conclude that he should be given a chance to reform himself? What if he is further emboldened by the reprieve and commits a similar crime - finds another innocent victim? The same ecosystem, the activist lobby who is controlling the justice system in India will come to protect him. And the judges will be indirectly responsible for creating a menace, the society will lose another son or daughter. Possible, right? Am not denying that the person may not be reformed. Only saying that the justice dispensation process is so convoluted that it does not take into account the repercussions of the action of a pardon.

Now you may say that the judges have only commuted a death sentence, what's in it? They may have reduced the life sentence to twenty years, what's in it? Its the magnitude of the injustice that matters. the victim did not get justice here. The very definition of rarest of rare crime to get a death sentence is under question mark. The judges are loathe to give a death sentence by taking a queue from the international humanitarian justice system driven by European Union that itself is questionable. we all know the credentials of European countries, how they blatantly violate human rights in other countries while preaching human rights to all. Moreover our dharmic system of justice was always based on the law of karma. People rarely reforms over a life time owing to the bad samskaras. They reform over many life times by getting blows from the nature. the European system has evolved taking a queue from the Christian belief that there is only one life, therefore criminals must be given a chance to reform in this very life. We, as a country, have a different belief and value system. If we reprieve serious and heinous crimes like brutal rape and murder of a four year old, what message are we delivering to the society? Thankfully India has a low crime rate relative to its population and yet the justice system is crumbling. That is because of the belief and value system of our ancient civilization, the dharma, that upholds our innate sense of justice, despite the failures of the leaders. There is no urge from the Government that tomtoms about new India to reform the justice system. They have left the justice system and internal affairs in the hands of activist for showing Mr. Modi as a saint, a demigod, a Mahatma, to the world. The Mahatmas have a serious problem. They cannot strike a balance between their own personal ambition and the national interest. they put their own image and possibly ideals above that of the Nation. So we live with a rotten criminal justice system. One great man had rightly said, indisciplined democracy is a mobocracy. he had envisioned a future where there should be a controlled dictatorship under a benevolent leader for twenty years till India was ready to embrace democracy. But that great man was banished and we as a nation did not outrage. we forgot our past, we forgot those who laid down their lives for the nation. We embraced unbridled growth, we became selfish, self preserving, self seeking, commercial. the society is paying the result and I have a guess that we'll have to pay very heavily for these transgressions. Be prepared for that.

Its utterly sad to see that there is no outrage over such a judgement. As a nation, have we become so insensitive to the plight of the innocents?