The BMW drunken-driving-case, like the Jessica Lall murder case before it, is a high-profile case. Both cases ought to have been tried and decided within a year of framing the charges; but regrettably they were not, leaving time for authentic evidence to be suppressed, manipulated or destroyed. In the Jessica Lall case, at least three persons who had previously said in their recorded statements to the police that they had seen the person who shot dead the unfortunate girl, retracted at the trial — saying on oath that they saw nobody and heard nothing! In the BMW case, one eyewitness who had, on the day of the incident, telephonically informed his employers about the crash, said at the trial that he was too frightened to see what happened! A second person who also saw the tragedy (of more than six persons being run over) refused to support the prosecution’s case at the trial.

If the law had been what the Justice Malimath Committee had recommended way back in 2003, the legal representatives of the victims in each of these two cases would have had the right to be impleaded as parties in the criminal proceedings and to take active part in them. Unfortunately the entire part of the report, titled “Justice to Victims” has just not been implemented — no excuses offered, no reasons given.

The government has selectively picked and chosen whatever legislation suited its whim of the moment. At a time when major structural changes are required in certain areas of the criminal law, only cosmetic changes have been made. One of these areas is in cases where the accused is charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder (as the principal accused in the BMW case was charged) — punishable with imprisonment for up to ten years - and in cases where there are grave allegations about witnesses being tampered with because of the importance of the people involved. In such cases the right of the accused to remain silent (a right conferred by Section 313 of the criminal procedure code) has often been an impediment to justice.

... contd.