There are many occassions in life when it really feels nice to be proved wrong. Yesterday [Aug 14, 2008] happens to be one of those days since, during the day, Calcutta High Court, instead of taking the cover-up route, directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India’s premier body of sleuths, to file charge sheets against the accused in the Rizwanur Rehman case.
I had written that chances are, the whole case will end up in a clever cover-up. Thank God that with this order, the chances of a complete and clever cover-up have more or less vanished.
But the truth? I don’t think that will come out ever.
With the kind of evidence tampering that Kolkata Police has done, we shall never know who killed Rizwanur. And killed he must have been because a suicide theory simply does not fit the young man’s psychological profile. Even if Riz had to suffer the heart-breaking betrayal of someone he apparently loved quite dearly, suicide seems to be the last thing that a fighter like him would have opted for.
He would have fought till death and that’s what really happened – they killed him because there was no way out. Riz would not give up whatever the temptations or humiliations.
Even then just chargesheeting the accused is one huge step forward. At least let these vermins face some harrassment – even that is some punishment, however mild compared to their crime.
But I have little doubt that the accused will ultimately go scot free as the CBI will not be able to amass enough evidence to get a conviction.
Moreover, the High Court has not directed any charge sheet against Ashok Todi. Only Pradip Todi, A. Saraogi and Pappu apart from three policemen – deputy commissioner Ajay Kumar, assistant commissioner Sukanti Chakroborty and sub-inspector Krishnendu Das – will be charge sheeted. So, former police commissioner Prasun Mukherjee too will stay unscathed.
Unfortunately, however, even this little step towards some kind of justice has to be taken with a pinch of salt because the charge sheet will be only under the anti-rowdy section – a relatively minor offence compared to murder or abatement of suicide.
So, even as I write, I realise that, after all, what we are really witnessing is unmistakeably a cover-up in one way or another – directly or indirectly. The truth will not come out, the murderers will not be charge sheeted for either murder or abatement of suicide, justice will be denied. There is little doubt about that. The only consolation is: these killers may have to spend a few days in the cooler.
But there are, hopefully, larger implications. By confirming that the seven accused should at least be chargesheeted, even if it is only under the anti-rowdy section, the Calcutta High Court has again brought the issue back into public discourse. Let us hope this will lead to some more public pressure to punish those who helped to snuff out a completely innocent but young life.
I must reiterate once again that the only way these murderers can be punished is through what may be called public punishment. Concerned members of the public should unite and launch a concerted campaign against the Todi’s and their products and the accused policemen should be socially boycotted.
If these two moves can be carried out with sufficient intensity then these killers will hopefully be forced to commit suicide themselves, thus ridding our society of their excresence-like existence.
There will be many who will try to point out that in a democratic country where there exists the rule of law no one is guilty till proven guilty. Very true, but such an argument would be only looking at what Amartya Sen would call the Niti approach to justice – an approach that gives importance only to legal and behaviourial propriety and what could create a perfectly just society. It would completely ignore the Naya approach that gives importance to removing gross injustices here and now to realise justice in actual reality.
For global readers, if any, Niti and Naya are two Sanskrit words that mean the same thing – justice. Amartya Sen, the nobel-winning economist, however, made the above distinction while delivering the Hiren Mukherjee Memorial lecture in the Indian Parliament recently. I will discuss Amartya’s ideas in a later post in more detail but let us come back to the issue at hand.
Even if we accept that the general principle should certainly be that no one should be declared guilty till proven guilty, in the Rizwanur case, little proof is required to know for an absolute certainty that the 7 people accused and Ashok Todi and Prasun Mukherjee are guilty and should be punished with the severest of punishments in this country – death by hanging because they are guilty of murder.
Of course, getting a conviction in a court of law along these lines is an entirely different matter altogether because some of these accused, as the very guardians of law, were quick to completely erase and destroy every single bit of evidence against them. This compounds their crime and in no way makes them deserving of a so-called fair trial.
Unfair people have to be dealt with unfairly. Gross injustice must be removed here and now by whatever means that may yield this justice in reality, in actuality, instead of trying to be a stickler for propriety and perfect/ideal justice and in the process deny realised justice.
Let us hope public conscience will be strong enough to generate more than sufficient public wrath that is needed to actually bring the guilty to justice!
One can only hope and go on hoping – like Rizwanur had done till he was attacked from behind and killed, probably by a couple of “policemen” in plain clothes!
