It was 42 degrees in the shade and just past noon. The shabby, filthy court was filling up. Witnesses, lawyers, relations were shuffling shoulder to shoulder on to the narrow wooden benches. The prisoners were being readied for their day in court. They were all men or they must have been at one time. Now they were cowed animals, some young, some older, some very old. All 15 or so undernourished weaklings: all tied together in one rope, looped together like the cattle they were. None dared to look up. Their heads hung down. Their bodies shrank away from the public gaze.

Two police constables with dark patches of sweat staining their underarms poked and prodded at the lines and grunted orders in monosyllables no one could understand. But the prisoners seemed to know what to do. At each sharp bark they jerked back against the verandah wall, at another they crouched down and squatted in a huddle so as not to inconvenience the feet of passers-by. There they stayed, crunched down, waiting for the judge to come into court. He did. At 12.15 pm or so. An hour late.

The police got to work on releasing the prisoners, undoing the knots and nooses around their hands and waists, looking over their shoulders into the courtroom to make sure the judge didn’t catch sight of the prisoners all tied up in a row. Form required that prisoners should not be handcuffed, leave alone fettered because the Supreme Court had long ago said that the prisoner’s dignity must be preserved. The prisoner’s dignity — that jokey idea — was being restored outside the court. The guards needn’t have worried. Happy in the knowledge that no prisoner is ever handcuffed, the judge wasn’t paying heed to the chained gang just outside his door.

... contd.