| Chattering classes anywhere relish nothing more than a courtroom drama and in recent days the capital is again having its fill: the arrest of fashion designer Bina Ramani, her dramatic collapse in the magistrate's court and remand to police custody in the retrial of the cold-blooded murder of model Jessica Lall. Those hooked to the labyrinthine twists of this case since Jessica was shot dead in Ramani's restaurant in April 1999 have had few attention-flagging moments. At each turn, new questions arise, which point a finger at the collapsed state of the country's criminal justice system. |
| Most notably this happened last February, when the trial court acquitted the accused, Congress politician's son Manu Sharma and others, for lack of evidence. Had it not been for a combination of public outrage and media pressure, the case would have got fizzled out and buried under the staggering stockpile of pending litigation in Indian courts""an estimated 27 million cases at last count. |
| More than seven years after the episode, a couple of stark questions may sock the level-headed observer between the eyes: why carry off the restaurant-owner to jail when it has not been established through the judicial process who killed Jessica. More important, whatever happened to the original prosecution team""from junior police inspectors to senior officers and forensic lab experts""who botched the investigation so badly, thus assisting the accused and severely hampering the process of justice for Jessica? And how effective is the Special Investigating Team now pursuing the matter if it can't make the Amod Kants, Surinder Sharmas, Roop Singhs, Vivek Gogias accountable for their omissions and commissions? Not only has these officials' investigation of the murder been shown up to be thoroughly incompetent, they also stand accused of gross neglect, with their ludicrous garbled saga of an untraceable weapon, two guns and switched bullets. |
| Not one of them has in any way been penalised; they remain secure in their jobs with promotions coming in time. All that has happened is that they have been transferred to obscure jobs, thus putting them out of the public gaze. It is exactly the kind of situation that the eminent jurist Fali Nariman has in mind in his recent book India's Legal System: Can It Be Saved? Judges must be empowered to conduct their own investigations in the criminal justice system, he argues, because the public has no faith in state prosecutors. It is one reason why the conviction rate in criminal cases is dwindling at an alarming rate. Nor is the setting up of fast-track investigations, as in the Jessica Lall murder, any guarantee that the guilty will be punished. |
| It may be the reason why the police officers now presiding over the special investigation are so busy digging up the dirt on Bina Ramani""the unlicensed bar she was running, her bogus ownership of the premises, her marriage certificate and so on. It is convenient fodder for the chattering classes and media mills because a figure connected with the glamorous worlds of film and fashion is bound to attract greater attention than a bunch of failed cops and dangerous people on the loose. |
| Or it may well be, as some have suggested, that the special investigating team fears another acquittal because it cannot plug the loopholes to rebuild a convincing case against the killers, whoever they are. Either way, it is reminiscent of the old English proverb which goes: Give a dog a bad name and hang him. Bina Ramani's crimes, municipal or marital, are minor compared to those of Jessica's killers and prosecutors. The chattering classes should sit up and take note. |
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