B is for Bofors, Q is for farce

Last week marked the tenth anniversary of the Uphaar cinema tragedy, in which 59 people were gassed slowly to death because the cinema owners failed to provide minimum standards of safety. The victims died slow, painful deaths because they were locked into the cinema as it filled up with poison gas. The owners of the cinema are out on bail and their lawyers have been remarkably clever at delaying the process of justice in a system that works too slowly at the best of times.

That the sentencing in the 1993 bomb blasts case has taken several months speaks for itself. Why should sentencing not take months when it has taken fifteen years for the trial to be completed?

The only people who fear our justice system are the weakest of our citizens. People like Shaji Nair, who was acquitted by the Bombay High Court last week on the last day of serving a full seven-year term for attempted robbery. Shaji Nair was 21 years old when he was locked up on the flimsiest of grounds. Someone complained that he had been attacked and Shaji was picked up by the police in the vicinity of the attack because he happened to have a knife on him. He was working as a waiter at the time and pleaded his

innocence, but he could not afford a lawyer so he remained in jail. It turns out now that he was innocent but he has already served his sentence. Will the Indian state compensate him for stealing seven years of his life?

Indian jails are filled with men like Shaji Nair. Their stories appear in the press every now and then but mostly they remain forgotten. It’s great that the judiciary is so eager to keep the executive and legislative branches of Government on their toes, but who is going to make the judges look in their own backyard? As long as the justice system remains the way it is, men like Shaji Nair will rot in jail and men like Ottavio Quattrocchi will walk free.

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