Saturday, July 25, 2020

35 years to conclude a trial


I was in college in 1985 when the news of Man Singh had hit the newspapers. 

Newspapers were largely  the source of information and which I avidly followed. 

Though his name sounds like a dacoit he was a former royal  of the former state of Bharatpur who had won every election he had stood for and was still treated as royalty by his erstwhile  subjects. In the interests of brevity I am just jumping to the end skipping the details. He was shot down quite cold bloodily by the Rajasthan police over a dispute and it was attempted to pass of his case as encounter. His popularity can by gauged by the fact that there was a complete shutdown of the area and the chief minister was forced to resign. (Yes such things used to happen).

The news had some morbid fascination for me which is why the incident remains in my  mind.

I was recollecting  the incident a few weeks back but could not find any reference since I had forgotten his name and the state.

A few days back I read in the paper that the trial court finally found 11 policemen  guilty of murder and were all sentenced to life imprisonment. Some of the accused had already died. So it took 35 years to complete a trial. Assuming the culprits were in the age group of 25-35 they would now be 60 to 70 years old !!!.  This trial  was not allowed to go to cold storage on account for the persistence of the victims family else it might have languished in courts for longer.
Now there are still 2 levels of appeals possible for  the convicts which could take anything upto 10 years more by which all involved would have met their maker the final dispenser of justice.

So now we can understand the oft repeated phrase  “The law will take its own course”

#law-will-take-its-own-course