Rule of law - Are Rajeev Gandhi and Narendra Modi innocent because they have not been tried and convicted by a court ?
Like so many superstitions it is blindly believed that our country is under the rule of law. There are features, which may support the notion, but the test of the pudding is in the eating.
If the guilty do not escape punishment and the innocent are not punished, the claim is unquestionable. But does India pass the test? Can we claim that even 5% of our politicians and public servants are not corrupt ?But what is the percentage of the corrupt who are punished ?
If it is accepted that only those of the politicians and public servants are corrupt who have been convicted by a court of law , then India will have to be declared the 'least corrupt country in the world'.
Similarly, in 1984 about 3000 Sikhs were massacred in Delhi alone, but how many were punished ? Hundreds were massacred in Gujarat riots in 2002, but how few have been punished ? Are Rajeev Gandhi and Narendra Modi innocent because they have not been tried and convicted by a court ? They are no exceptions. There is an army of countless criminals who have not only escaped punishment but are ruling the roost.How does our criminal justice system operate ? Rohini Salian , the Public Prosecutor in the Malegaon blast case has resigned because the NIA asked her to sabotage the case .Why ? Because the accused are not Muslim terrorists but Hindu terrorists. In Ajmer blast case, .the witnesses are turning hostile because the government in Delhi has changed. Amit Shah and the other accused in Gujarat have started getting bail one after another.Can we still claim that the law is allowed to
The other side of the coin is the havoc played with the personal liberty of the innocent persons .So much is rightly made of the detention of 35000 under MISA during the emergency.But those detentions are at least accepted as a black spot on our democracy.But what about the detention of 76000 persons under TADA in the wake of Khalistan movement in Punjab in 1980s ? Of these ,19000 were detained in Gujarat alone , where there was not even a whisper of terrorism at that point of time .Thousands others were also indiscriminately detained outside Punjab.
Personal liberty is the cheapest commodity in India
Personal liberty is the cheapest commodity in India, which can be taken away for no fault of yours without a compensation. Shameless laws are shamelessly enacted to rob the people of their personal liberty, a spectacle we shamelessly watch with disgusting indifference. POTA presents a glaring example of a shameless law and our disgusting indifference. Vaiko, a Tamil Nadu, leader and an M.P.was detained by Jaylalitha under POTA. The whole world including the P.M. Bajpai knew he was no terrorist, the judiciary knew knew hebess no terrorist but nobody could set him at liberty, and he remained in jail till the government changed in Tamil Nadu.
How does such a thing become possible ? Simply by defining a 'terrorist, 'Maoist' or an 'Unlawful activity 'in such a way that anyone of us may become a 'terrorist' , 'Maoist,' 'anti-national 'or worse if the
government declares so. By the time, you prove that the allegation is false, you have remained shut in a jail for years, your health is ruined and your family in hell. Such injustice is a the hallmark of a fascist state and not of either a democracy and or the rule of law.
And we , too. are guilty because while , the real enemies of the nation have been ruling the roost , we have continued to watch their match for the throne cheering and jeering our favorite team with an unpardonable indifference to the subversion of the rule of law and the victims of this subversion.
Prabhakar Sinha
National President of PUCL
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