The SIT is supposed to be investigating murder and gives us instead charges against Ramani that by no stretch of the judicial imagination merit incarceration. But, this is India, so the man who killed Jessica because she refused to give him a drink now runs his own bar in Chandigarh and has a father who is a minister in Haryana’s Congress government. And, Ramani goes to jail for allegedly forging some document and running a bar without a licence. She has already paid a fine for the unlicensed bar and her restaurant has been closed for the past seven years, so where was the need to arrest her if not to intimidate her? Besides, was the SIT set up to examine murder or forgery?

Jessica’s senseless, tragic murder should have been an open-and-shut case. She was behind the bar in Ramani’s restaurant when Manu Sharma and his friends walked in. When she told him the bar was closed, he took out a pistol and shot her in the head. He then fled abandoning his car outside the restaurant. It was Ramani and Georges who chased after him, they who called the police and asked them to impound his SUV, they who took Jessica to the hospital, they who refused to change their evidence (everyone else did) and it is they who have been consistently targeted by the police and, oddly enough, by the media.

From day one Jessica’s murder was treated on par in the media with Ramani running an unlicensed bar. And, when she was arrested last week, most of the media asked no questions as if she somehow deserved to be arrested. I have concluded that the lack of sympathy for Ramani comes from her being a ‘socialite’, a celebrity of sorts, while Manu Sharma is only a good, little middle-class boy gone bad. Otherwise, surely there should be more outrage that a key witness is in jail while the killer walks free.

Surely, there should be more outrage that his father, Vinod Sharma, continues to be a minister in a Congress government. I emphasise Congress because please remember it is our only political party headed by someone who prides herself on always taking the moral high ground. Where is Sonia Gandhi’s inner voice now? How does she sleep at night knowing that she has a Chief Minister who thinks nothing of appointing a man in his Cabinet whose son could be charged with such a ghastly crime?

Perhaps, though, we are all to blame. I hear from Chandigarh that Manu Sharma is seen at social events and that there are many people in that city who think there is nothing wrong in going to his restaurant. I had imagined that some kind of social sanctions would apply but this is not the case and that saddens me because in the end people get the institutions they deserve.

We have a criminal justice system that can be subverted by power and money. This has already been established not just in Jessica Lall’s case but in the murder of another young woman, Priyadarshini Mattoo. Her killer went on to make a career as a lawyer because the prosecution made such a shoddy case that the judge was unable to convict him even though, as he openly admitted, he knew that he was the killer. The same thing happened with Jessica.

Everyone knows who killed her but key eyewitnesses, like Shayan Munshi, changed their evidence and the police investigation was so pathetic that the courts were forced to let Manu walk free. It was a campaign by the media that caused the case to be reopened and the onus of ensuring that the SIT does its job also lies with the media. Whatever Ramani may or may not have done, she did not kill Jessica Lall and that is the only thing the SIT needs to remember. It was not appointed to investigate forgery. It was appointed to investigate murder and if it does not remember this its very existence is a travesty, yet another mockery of Indian justice.