W(h)ither justice?

The gangsters, the police, and the prisons in India appear to operate in a world shrouded in mystery and power. The public’s insatiable appetite for movies and television shows about the nexus between the underworld and law enforcement agencies attests to the subject’s allure. The spectacular success of the Kannada film KGF II is only the most recent example. The incessant and visceral fascination with underworld dons and violent engagement is now spilling over from the silver screen into the real world.

Consider recent events: A woman reporter for a national television channel is summarily arrested and detained in Punjab on concocted charges simply because she was exposing the duplicity of a self-righteous politician. Anand Mohan Singh, a gangster-politician and former MP convicted to life imprisonment for instigating the killing of Gopalganj district magistrate in 1994, is released in April 2023 after the Government of Bihar amends jail rules for his early release.

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In January 2008, in the much-quoted Bilkis Bano case, 11 men were sentenced to life imprisonment for rape and murder. On August 15, 2022, all 11 men were released from a Godhra jail by the Gujarat government. The judge who sentenced the rapists said the early release set a bad precedent and warned that the move would have wide ramifications. Contrast this with the fact that over 76% of the total prisoners in India—over 550,000—are undertrials, most of them poor and disadvantaged.

In a dramatic, surreal action that would be the envy of any film-maker, Atiq Ahmed, another gangster and politician who had more than 160 criminal cases against him, is shot dead at point-blank range with his accomplice. Atiq Ahmed, like several other gangsters who populate our Parliament, had contested several elections from jail.

In the 17th Lok Sabha constituted following the 2019 general elections, half of the MPs have declared criminal cases. Out of a strength of 542 members, 233 MPs have declared criminal cases against themselves, an increase of 44 per cent in the number of MPs with declared criminal cases since 2009. Put differently, the chances of winning for a candidate with declared criminal cases in the Lok Sabha 2019 were 15.5 per cent, whereas for a candidate with a clean background, it was 4.7 per cent. With the general elections due next year, this is a rather disconcerting fact.

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Our criminal justice system is in precipitous decline and now serves as the handmaiden of politics. The nexus between crime and politics appears to be the new normal, with political parties boasting of the who’s who of the criminal world in their ranks. Where else will you see such large numbers of criminals being elected to the state legislatures and the Parliament, several of them serving in the council of ministers, and many of them contesting elections from jail? What should, however, be a matter of deep concern is the question: What kind of society are we leaving behind for our grandchildren?

In an irony peculiar to our times, the criminal justice system has been made to stand on its head, innocence called upon to justify itself, while criminals convicted and sentenced walk free. These three cases serve as case studies and provide ominous signs of where we are headed as a society. They highlight just how the gangster-politician thrives in a colonial-era criminal justice edifice shrouded in political chicanery. And why it may yet overwhelm the country’s political landscape and completely jeopardise our democracy and the aspirations of the ordinary citizen to justice. But this cannot continue unchecked in a modern democratic nation.

As citizens, we need to draw first principles from what is happening to our criminal justice system. First, the criminal-politician nexus is jeopardising the idea of justice. It is disheartening to know that as many as 10 judges recused themselves from hearing the criminal cases against Atiq Ahmed for fear of retribution.

Second, politicians are able to tweak rules to release criminals of choice from prison, even when they are sentenced to life imprisonment, if they choose to. Third, our laws are archaic, and our jurisprudence suffers from a colonial hangover. The police, judiciary, and prison authorities appear helpless when operating in a colonial criminal justice system.

The hierarchy of courts and appeals after appeals enables the gangster-politician to operate with temerity. Of greater concern is the fact that, so far, there’s been a complete lack of political will to change the status quo. Every federal government in independent India, regardless of the political party and its ideology, has been comfortable carrying on with a system that is opaque, unaccountable, and immune, set in place by the British Raj.

It is all very well to aspire to become a Vishwa Guru. There are compelling and, even dangerous, society-wide implications when the foundational principle of our democracy—the rule of law—begins to fail. We are at risk of insidiously transforming into a Machiavellian society: cynical, manipulative, and amoral. The Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud’s call last year to critically reflect on the progress we have made to advance the ideals of our Constitution should make us reflect on the crisis before us.

A good start will be for the apex court to enforce its own seven directives in the famous, but now forgotten, Prakash Singh case on police reforms. The apex court and the government must intervene with urgency in their respective jurisdictions to stem the rot. The Chief Justice of India and the higher judiciary, the prime minister, and the Ministry of Law and Justice need to, even if independently, work to remove colonial laws and practices and modernise the criminal justice system.

India deserves a system of administration of justice that reflects the 21st rather than the 19th century. But, in the ultimate analysis, the burden must be ours—the citizens—to not vote for criminals and thugs when the general elections come around in 2024.

(The writer is director of the School of Social Sciences at MS Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences.)