In an age when computers have become an essential tool of modernity Indian courts still function with 19th-century methods. The court clerk taps away at a manual typewriter so judges have to read their judgements in slow motion. Evidence is recorded also in slow motion and the end result is so much paperwork that the reek of musty files pervades Indian courts. The justice system is a vital tool in the war on terror but in its current shape it compares with our policemen using World War ll rifles against the automatic weapons of terrorists.

Policing is a vital component of this war but what more can be said about it than that in the 1993 bomb blasts case most of the 123 people arrested were underlings and flunkeys. Thirty of the alleged master plotters continue to live free and happy lives in Pakistan and Dubai with no fear of Indian justice catching up with them. Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, the alleged mastermind of the evil plan, went on to marry his daughter to Javed Miandad’s son last year, acquiring a measure of acceptability in Pakistani haute society. Judging by how much gold the bride wore at her wedding he might have been able to buy his way in even without the alliance.

Tiger Memon, Dawood’s main lieutenant, lives between Pakistan and Dubai and according to the Mumbai Mirror owns a building called Kashif Crown on the Shahrah-e-Faisal Road in Karachi. There have been shootouts in the building and reports of Hizbul Mujahideen connections. There is not enough room here to list what the other 30 alleged mass murderers are up to but suffice it to say that nearly all live in reasonable comfort in Karachi. If a Mumbai newspaper can provide its readers with addresses of the alleged killers and details of their current activities why is it so hard for our justice system to catch them?

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