It was the fateful night of 12th December 2012, when a women physiotherapy intern, was beaten, gang raped and tortured in a moving bus. The incident become a milestone in the field of policing, judiciary, and society at large. It poses fundamental question to the system that govern this country and in terms of the above said parameters.
After
the rape was done police hunt down all the 6 culprit and case was registered
against them for attempt of murder, destruction of evidence, kidnapping, murder
and rape. Case started against them, and by March 2020 after 7 years and couple
of months, 4 convicts were hanged in Delhi.
This
incident raises many questions:
Question of custodial death
Question of judiciary reform
Fundamental of policing in country
Societal reform
Societal reform
Grilling on above question will give us an insight on how the system work and what need to be done to fill the loopholes.
Let’s
dive-in
Custodial
Death
Committing
a crime is a heinous act, and it should be condemned. But, killing a criminal
on the basis of ‘revenge mentality or eye for an eye mentality’, still a far
greater crime when view from the lens of constitutional acceptance. Similar was
the case of Ram Singh, prime accused of the December 16 Vasant Vihar gang-rape
case was found hanging from the ceiling of his cell around 0545hr on 11th
March in cell No. 03.
His death had raised a number of
questions such as
Was he depressed?
Was he murdered?
How did he hang himself when his
right arm was almost unusable due to road accident in 2009?
How will his death impact the trail
underway in the court?
The
first three question’s answers are very controversial as the jail authorities
are claiming that it was suicide and journalist are pressing for a fair investigation
on why this happened in a jail in national capital of India.
This
is certain that his death could had uncovered something new, but we missed that
chance after his suicide.
Jail
authorities should take preventive action to prevent such incident happening in
Indian jails as presently the status quo is really bad.
Judicial
Reforms
The
biggest question which judicial system of India have to answer are: -
Why there is huge delay in
judgement?
Structural reforms
Pendency
of cases in the Indian judicial system is a chronic issue, many reforms were
implemented in the past, such as increasing the strength of judge in the Supreme
Court (SC). But these measures turned out to be insufficient to address the problem.
Lok Adalats (Public Court/ Community
Court) was the concept which was practiced in India from ancient times and this
same concept appeared to be a silver lining in 1980’s. Thus, Legal Service
Authorities Act, 1987 gave a statutory status to Lok Adalats. To pass the
benefit further down concepts like Mobile Lok Adalats were organised in
various part of the country. This Mobile Lok Adalat travel from one
location to another to resolve disputes in order to facilitate the resolution
of disputes through this mechanism.
This,
brought some relief to the pendency of the cases but still courts were not penetrated
deep into the mindset of a common villager. To do it concept of Free Legal
Aid was formulated, in which free legal services are given the contender.
In
Nirbhaya case also same thing was repeated and case got dragged for 7 long
years. Even though the hearing was happening in the fast track court. This
delay in the justice will increase the confidence of the culprit and decrease
the confidence of the common man.
Coming
to the point of structural reforms in the Indian Judiciary, there is urban need
such as,
Proposal is to setup zonal benches
of the Supreme Court to bring the judicial system closer to people.
Attorney General KK Venugopal suggested
creating courts of appeals between the Supreme Court and high court regions.
Making
Supreme Court as the court of Appeal is also a very good idea which if
implemented will take away lot of cases from the Supreme Courts will go.
Policing in India
The
objectives of the policing system in India are: -
To
fulfil duties based on border responsibilities, in the areas of maintenance of
public peace and order, crime prevention, investigation, and detection,
collection of intelligence, VIP security, counter-terrorism, border policing,
railway policing, tackling smuggling, drug trafficking, economic offences,
corruption in public life, disaster management, enforcement of socio-economic
legislation, bio-diversity and protection of environmental laws etc.
Leading
and commanding the Indian Intelligence Agencies like Research and Analysis Wing
(R&AW), Intelligence Bureau (IB), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI),
Criminal Investigation Department (CID) etc., Indian Federal Law Enforcement
Agencies, Civil and Armed Police Forces in all the states and union
territories.
Leading
and commanding various Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) which include the
Central Police Organisations (CPO) such as Border Security Force (BSF), Central
Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), National
Security Guard (NSG), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Vigilance
Organisations and Indian Federal Law Enforcement Agencies.
To
lead and command the force with courage, uprightness, dedication and a strong
sense of service to the people.
Endeavor
to inculcate in the police forces under their command such values and norms as
would help them serve the people better.
Inculcate
integrity of the highest order, sensitivity to aspirations of people in a
fast-changing social and economic milieu, respect for human rights, broad
liberal perspective of law and justice and high standard of professionalism.
Out
of the above-mentioned objective of the police, she had failed in many quarters.
In changing times institution show also adopt various measure to tackle the situation
that arise out of the society. When Nirbhaya rape case occurred, police
followed its age-old SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) and in due course many
of the opportunity to have a fair and true investigation irrespective of who is
right or wrong was missed. This tendency of lack of professionalism in the
Indian Policing System is deep rooted from the imperial times when police is
mostly used to supress & extraction.
The victim was forced to give
statement in traumatised condition in hospital and was made to repeat it to every
official. This kind of insensitivity was show. This implies that very few
officers and men of the police fraternity have empathy for the general public.
Another issue that came to light is
the investigating procedure of the police in the matter of rape and the teethlessness
of the Indian law to deal with this kind of crime. Thus, government established
Verma Commission under the leadership of Justice Verma and many additions were
done on the definition of the rape and molestation of women.
Model
Police Code and infrastructure development is very essential for the survival
of police in modern age.
Society
Rape
is considered to be one of the major and most gruesome acts in our society, but
still rapes are happening in large number. Most of the rapes in India are not
even know as they occur in far off village where filing a FIR regarding rape is
a social stigma. The question here arise is – is patriarchal outlook is to be
blamed?
Well major share of the blame has to
be bore by the patriarchal system. But also, reforms are needed in education system.
Still Indian society has not accepted 3rd gender and do not offer mainstream
jobs.
This negligence of recognition of
gender difference is a major roadblock which stand between the equality of the
gender. Lastly it boils-down to the education system and the government
policies as citizen in itself is not aware upto the required level.
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