Law and disorder

Phew! The Bombay High Court has done the right thing. It has pulled up the prosecution in the Alistair Pereira hit and run case, saying it was ‘insensitive’ while dealing with the matter. (I think insensitivity is a kind word in this situation, I would be tempted to use much harsher terms.) In a stricture for the lower court that acquitted Pereira of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, the High Court said it should have examined co-passengers as witnesses. I cannot believe the prosecution failed to make the witnesses testify, usually we are saddled with crimes where there is no witness, and here we have as many as three of them, and yet they aren’t interrogated. The High Court has asked the Police Commissioner to explain certain "loopholes" in the investigation. The honourable judges have also asked the investigating officers to verify whether the victims have got the compensation and how they have invested the same. Sure, not only should the victims be adequately compensated but also I do hope the judiciary doesn’t let the prosecution and the cops get away with this. Alistair Pereira must face the music for sure, but so must those people who indulged in ‘shoddy’ work. In fact, I hope there is an investigation into whether the work was indeed shoddy, or were there some financial transactions involved. The High Court has the opportunity to make this into an exemplary case for all future hitters and runners, and their helpers.

What about Narendrabhai?
With the Gujarat government facing the heat in the fake encounter case, the state CID has detained a few middle and lower level policemen who were part of the operations led by the three arrested senior IPS officers, according to NDTV. A case may be registered against these eight policemen and they are likely to be arrested once the CID is sure of their role in the crime. The CID is interrogating certain policemen of the ranks of Inspector, Sub-inspector and Constable who were members of the team that tracked the victim Sohrabuddin Sheikh all the way from Hyderabad till the scene of the encounter in November 2005. What worries me about this story is this: while it is all very well to track down the criminal cops and try them in the courts, what about the culpability of the netas under whose instructions and goodwill these heinous crimes were committed? Sadly, they will as usual get away with murder, which is, to my mind, the single biggest failure of our great democracy.