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Justice ... very quick
ANIL DHARKER
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We wouldn't grudge judicial quickness in headline-grabbing cases if it weren't for the appalling figures our justice system throws up repeatedly.
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"Ek Chotisi Love Story" ... larger issues than an actress's hurt feelings.
WE have seen the photographs till we are sick of them: Manisha Koirala looking careworn and unkempt, the actress in the role of Wronged Woman. But actors need directors to keep them in check and they need script-writers to give them lines to say. In the real life drama of Ek Chotisi Love Story, however, Koirala is on her own, and like any unrestrained actor, she's gone over the top, quite out of control.
But this isn't about Koirala's acting talents or Shashilal Nair's so-called exploitation; this is about the actress' very public "quest for justice". The director done her in, she says, and revenge is what she wants.
As it happens, the legal system dispensed justice extra-ordinarily quickly in this case: Koirala got a temporary injunction on the release of the film, after which the Bombay High Court heard the case, the judge saw the film for himself and gave his verdict in a matter of a few days. Whereupon Koirala went to the Shiv Sena's Bal Thackeray, who has his own rough and ready version of justice; his party workers vandalised the theatres where Ek Chotisi Love Story was running, thus getting Koirala (however unofficially), the stay she wanted.
Behind the headlines, several rather odd questions beg to be asked. First, why did the court give this particular case such priority? It was hardly a matter of life and death: the case concerned only a rather foolish actress's rather over-blown emotions, hardly a matter for judicial alacrity. Yet, as courts often do, this court too moved exceptionally fast in a high profile case. Someone might argue that matters of public decency are pressing issues. But cinema exhibition in our country is governed by a statutory film certification body which looks into these very issues rather minutely. It also has a built-in process for judicial review by an Appellate Tribunal, which might not be concerned about an actress's hurt feelings, but would certainly look at the larger issue.
We wouldn't grudge judicial quickness in headline-grabbing cases if it weren't for the appalling figures our justice system throws up again and again. Like 74 per cent of our total prisoners are undertrials. If you want the number, it is 2,15,183 now. Many of these might be innocent of any crime and may be held only on suspicion. Are they not likely to feel at least as aggrieved as Ms Koirala? There are, heaven knows, far worse statistics: like the 20 million cases pending in district and subordinate courts, some of them for years and years. Try and put a photogenic face on each one of them and you would have an army of Koiralas banging on the doors of justice.
Manisha Koirala ... a very public "quest for justice".
How do you react to the case of Gangaram Krishna Abubax who was assaulted with a knife by three union rivals and who got a conviction after 18 years? Or the 17 years and 130 hearings it took a local court in Mumbai to acquit a man of income-tax violations (as it happens, it didn't matter too much to the man himself; he had died three years before his acquittal. Or the nine-year-old girl — yes nine-year-old — whose rapist was convicted 19 years after his crime? Or a major building fraud where sentences were handed down on 14 people after 17 years (four of the 14 had in the meantime gone on to the Great Builder upstairs). Or the really, really sad case of the young Orissa journalist: she was gang-raped and murdered by political activists in revenge for her investigative reports. And only her husband's doggedness got a measure of justice when four of 12 accused were finally convicted. After 22 years.
These, of course, are the extremes, but the statistics which deal with the backlog of "mundane" cases like house usurpation, dowry harassment, bouncing cheques and the like, each hide a tale of human misery at least as deserving of speedy justice as Ms Koirala.
We all know that government inaction in the appointment of judges, in expanding their number, on increasing budgetary allotments, are all responsible for our shameful backlog of justice. But judicial activism and inactivism are even more to blame: inactivism in the Judiciary's reluctance to radically change the system so that decisions are swiftly delivered. And activism in the Judiciary's readiness to jump into each and every facet of our lives, whether we are dealing with broad-matters of policy like general levels of pollution, or on specifics like using a particular fuel (CNG), on which courts are hardly experts. That same micro-level approach allows the court to adjudicate on the propriety of using body-doubles.
In our corrupt, inept and warped society, our Judiciary is one of the few institutions which uphold a value system. But it can't do that effectively if it spread itself too thin. And it's doing that now, more and more and more.
Anil Dharker is a noted journalist, media critic and writer.
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