Justice delayed

It has been more than seven years since the horrific Nirbhaya gangrape shook the nation to the core, and over two-and-half years since the Supreme Court confirmed the death sentences to the four accused in the case. Recently, an SC bench led by Chief Justice SA Bobde pointedly observed that the time has come to take stock if this case “is the best the country’s law enforcement and judiciary could do” to bring the guilty to justice for crimes committed against women. After all, this happens to be a case “where agencies have acted swiftly taking into account the public outrage,” the apex Court noted, so it is necessary to review how provisions of criminal law are being implemented, including amendments from 2013 onwards relating to rape and other sexual offences. It is instructive to see how the four convicts on death row with their lawyers have been exploiting each and every loophole under the law to keep away the hangman’s noose. Their lawyers took months to file review petitions at the Supreme Court following its confirmation of death sentence in May 2017. Review petitions have to be filed within 30 days of the Court’s verdict, but this was not done. The petitions were filed on different dates, each several months after the others, the most recent being the one by Akshay Singh’s lawyer which the apex Court rejected like it did the earlier ones for having no merit. Some arguments in his petition asking the apex Court to review its verdict received wide publicity, like the one about “Delhi’s pollution shortening the life of everyone living there, so why is the death penalty being awarded”! Such brazen arguments merely confirm the worst public suspicions — that it is not just about cynically playing fast and loose with the Courts to keep taking new dates for hearing, but a mentality that the law is an ass which must be exploited to the hilt. Every other trick in the book has been used, like demanding the proceedings be made available in Hindi, claiming the accused were juveniles at the time of committing the crime, creating false alibis in Court, and so on. There is no knowing when the remaining legal remedies will be availed of, namely filing curative petition at the apex Court and petitioning the President for mercy. In the past, there have been well-publicized instances of mercy petitions to the President not taken up for years on end, leading to commutation of death sentence to life imprisonment. In the Nirbhaya case which made it through fast-track trial Court, it has been asked why did the Supreme Court take a full year and seven months to constitute a bench after admitting the case for hearing, and why daily hearings were not taken. This can be explained as precaution taken by the Court to allow itself a ‘cooling off period’ before hearing such a high intensity case, so as not to be weighed down by public sentiment and media scrutiny.

However, the order by Supreme Court now dismissing the review petition of Akshay Kumar hints at misgivings with the way things are going. The apex Court has asked several hard questions in the context of sexual offences, like whether the 60-day deadline each for investigation and trial is being adhered to, whether crimes against women are being tried in special courts, whether women judges are presiding over such trials, whether women officers record information from victims, and whether there is any standard operating protocol for responding to rape. All such information is necessary for a holistic view before the task is undertaken “to make the criminal justice system responsive,” the SC bench felt. Accordingly, replies have been sought from the States about the status of investigation, prosecution, medico-forensic agencies, rehabilitation and legal aid in sexual offence cases. The urgency of the matter can hardly be overstated, a recent instance being the gangrape and murder of a woman veterinarian at Hyderabad this month. The encounter-style shootings of the four accused by the police in the immediate aftermath has been publicly celebrated across the nation, even as jurists, rights groups and discerning citizens have warned of the dangers of rough and ready justice. The Supreme Court has ordered a judicial enquiry, while AIIMS is set to conduct a second autopsy of the bodies of the four accused men. As per the latest data from National Crime Records Bureau, 32,559 rape cases were registered in year 2017 alone; the conviction rate in rape cases stood at a measly 32.2 percent. This is a highly visible consequence of our failing criminal justice system, where law-breakers do not fear the law in the slightest, while law-abiding common citizens have lost all faith in justice being done. Add corrupt law enforcers and unprotected, intimidated witnesses to the picture — it becomes a dark one indeed.