Dear Parul: I am writing to say, sorry for having failed you. Not just as a police officer but also as a citizen who still nurses the hope that even as spectacular achievements of IT and BPO contribute to record economic growth, we will find the time and inclination to grapple with the Leviathan, originally a beast of Biblical legend and used to describe the state in a book of the same name by the philosopher Hobbes in the 17th century, lovingly brought to life in post-Independence India.

I honestly don’t know which was the bigger crime. Your senseless rape and murder or the denial and delay of the justice due to you by the agents of the Leviathan.

As a parent I share the terror and horror of the residents of Nithari. The deranged actions of the two accused are no more or less perverse than other serial killers. What is sickening is the institutional rot that allowed the systematic abduction, assault and murder of children and young women to go undetected for so long.

Nithari is yet another damning indictment of the farce that passes for policing in India. The alleged cannibalism of Mohinder Singh Pandher and his accomplice is an apt metaphor for the brutal relationship between the Indian state and its weakest citizens, with the men in khaki the most visible instrument of this monster, this Leviathan that shames and fails us, citizen and cop alike, every day.

In a civilised society, three institutions are charged with the responsibility to ensure accountability of both the state and individual citizens in their public and private actions — the judiciary, police and media. The manner in which your rape and murder was treated was because all three institutions have struck Faustian bargains to become instruments of the Leviathan.

... contd.