Law, legality, justice and judiciary system. What people fail to understand that most of time these are completely different things in the real world. While law and justice are in a sense more like emotions, legality and judiciary systems are the expressions of those emotions. A law may state that based on certain facts that a particular action or person is either right or wrong whereas legality is more like whether these fact add up to judge that action/person. Justice may seem to be a case where the law is followed whereas judiciary is the system that confirms that legality has been adhered to.
Over the last few weeks in India, a debate has arisen about the swinging verdict on the Salman Khan case, a case that started on 2002 and is nowhere near finished. Now the first question is who is Salman Khan? Salman Khan is a hugely celebrated and popular Indian Film Actor (i.e. to say the Bollywood film industry). His movies are generally the highest grossers of the last few years. He has a huge number of followers worldwide and immensely popular as an entertainer. He is also the main man behind a great charitable organization known as “Being Human”.
Now this seems all rosy stuff about him but then he was and still is convicted of several crimes. The most heinous of them is this one where he allegedly killed one man and injured four others while driving his car onto a footpath (a.ka. pedestrian way, walking trail, nature trail) in a drunken state. A few weeks back after 13 long years of court proceedings, the judge in the sessions court came to a conclusion that he was the man driving the vehicle that led to these death and injuries and the court ordered him for 5 years on imprisonment. As soon as this happened, India erupted. Some people were ecstatic that a celebrity like him got what he deserved and his fans and many other people were left heart broken. Three days later, he gets out on bail since it has not been proved whether he was really drunk or not and on what basis the punishment shall be dished out. His followers sighed of relief and were ecstatic now, the other half of people were angry and frustrated and social media erupted with views and opinion (albeit I am providing one here as well).
Now here is the funny part and the main reason why I am writing a blog on this. The way people started reacting on social media is as if something terribly wrong has happened that the court has allowed him bail. They are angry that he being a celebrity is using his powers and prowess and money and connections to get himself out of a tight spot. People are cursing the judiciary that has failed so horribly. But why all this nuisance on social media? Why scream about injustice now?
I must tell you here that I am not a lawyer and will not go into details of the law here. However, I am been brought up in a family of lawyers and I have a general idea about how things really go on in the courts in India. In this case the affected people are the appellant and Salman Khan is the Defendant. It means that the family of the person killed and those injured has appealed to the court that Salman Khan has committed a criminal offence and should be punished for. Now the point here is that, in this case, or for that matter in any criminal offence, it is not the defendant’s (or his lawyer’s) responsibility to prove that he is not guilty but it the responsibility of the Public prosecutor (who works for the Appellant) to prove in the court without any shred of doubt that the defendant has truly committed the crime. If there is any shred of doubt arising from the evidences that the defendant may not have committed the crime then it will and must go in favour of him. This is what has happened in this case as well, where the prosecutor could not answer to all the questions of the judge with conclusive evidences. Moreover, even a ruling from the sessions court can be overturned by the High Court, or the Supreme Court and finally if required by the International Court of Justice. So it’s a long way from getting done.
Now people may argue that evidences may be tampered, witnesses can be paid off, and money can talk. But it can be done by both sides. There is no dearth of people who will want to land Salman Khan in jail. But that is the real world my friends. My father, a lawyer himself, always used to tell me when I was young that “Justice delayed is justice denied”. It has already been delayed by 13 years. Is it too hard for people to wait further now? There are more than millions of pending cases in the High Courts with a severe lack of judges. The government needs to focus on these issues first so that in cases like this a judge can reach a verdict within a considerably faster time frame.
This case has been an eye opener. It has shown us what we need to do and what we need to do? If you really want to raise a voice, raise it for the fair selection of judges, raise it for more number of judges, raise to make the court proceedings smoother. Raise your voices to ask people not drink and drive. But I would encourage all youth and mostly all people to have faith in the Judiciary and the system in place. in Law there is already a process in place and be whom it may, he can use or misuse this process. But again legality states that these processes must be adhered to strictly to uphold law and justice. There is a reason on why the country is still progressing in spite of all this. Have faith in yourself and how you can add to that progress.
As in a parallel world Spiderman was told “With great power comes great responsibility”, however in the real world “With great power comes more power and misuse of power” (you may replace power with money if you want).
Cheerios until next time.
worldofbiba 