Murder through prasada: Please don't add another law!

It is a tragedy that will haunt us for a long time. The administrators of a Hindu temple in Sulavadi village in Chamarajanagar district, Karnataka, purchased a fatal dose of a dreaded pesticide, poisoned the temple prasada and offered it to its devotees. Bodies piled up soon. At last count, more than 15 people – including the very young, elderly and those in between – are dead and many more are battling for their lives. On television, the scenes of death and agony were very distressing and moving.

What this tragedy also revealed was the pathetic state of medical establishment in our rural pockets. There were not enough ambulances and those that were available did not even have life-saving equipment. Emergency doctors were clueless and experts on television were trying to guide them into different speculative treatments. Mechanical ventilators for those whose breathing was already impaired were nowhere at sight. With such an apparent and a miserable state of medical infrastructure, one would have to also wonder if there was enough stock of internal medicine.

Expectedly, the Chief Minister, Health Minister and their coterie got their pictures clicked among the dying and thought that their work was done. No public inquiry was directed to identify the serious shortage of life-saving infrastructure in those pockets and whether, some or even many of the deaths could have been delayed or avoided thereby. Errant medical officers were neither probed nor suspended.

The state government issued a law immediately to regulate temple prasad in government-owned temples – CCTVs in the area where the prasad would be prepared, prior permission and the like. That was it! The response of the government is typical of a failed state.

Murder has always been a crime on Indian soil. Under the current regime in effect since 1861, murder is punishable with death or life imprisonment (Section 302, Indian Penal Code, 1860). There is absolutely nothing that is lacking in our current laws to punish those that conspired to kill through the prasada in this case. A crime of this nature, unlike a solitary or isolated murder, shakes the fabric of mutual trust in our society and is therefore, deserving of the highest punishment that the law affords. So, it makes great sense for the police to act expeditiously. However, we have seen the police make more progress on television interviews than on the ground.

You could ask anyone on the street and he is likely to bet that it will be years before those offenders are awarded a befitting penalty. While I would urge the government to take every step to prove the street wrong about their impression of the police, courts and the government, I must wonder what made those temple administrators think that they could get away with such heinous and coldblooded murder on such a large scale. Is it possible that our society is in shambles already and we are blind to it?

There is no record of a temple poisoning its prasada to murder its devotees in recent decades – at least, not on such a large scale in India. Religion, god and temples were thought to keep inhuman impulses under check. At least, these institutions were expected to do so even if they were not originally conceived with such a social utility in mind. So, we should be worried about the fact that the moral fabric in our society is breaking down at an alarming pace.

Therefore, the futility of making any law to deal with a breakdown of social trust ought to have been obvious to our Government. You cannot, and there is simply no need for it. Laws could only make sense when the basic norms that characterise a human society are still intact and violations and aberrations are fewer and far between. Yet, we have already witnessed a futile law by the Karnataka Government in mandating prior permission and CCTV coverage for prasada preparation and distribution in government administered temples. However, different ingredients are mixed in order to prepare prasada and another bout of murder through prasada is perfectly possible even with the new and of course, a thoroughly mindless law churned out by our government.

God forbid, if those temple administrators had instead, held out a grand feast to the public in their house, away from the temple and had poisoned their guests, would our government come out with a law making it mandatory for every social gathering where food is served to obtain a prior permission and provide CCTV surveillance for the government to see?

Meanwhile, it was reported that many of the accused had confessed to aiding and conspiring in the murder. However, the confession was made to the police and not to a magistrate. A record of so many of our past cases tells us that an oral or a written confession to a police officer instead of a judge is often a sign that the police are seriously bungling the investigation. So, let alone requesting our government to not make any more law to deal with this tragedy, it might be too tall to even expect that the existing laws that have served us well for over a century will be put to good use – given the poor record of our police in solving cases that are keenly watched by the public.

And, it does not help for the lawyer groups practising in the court trying those accused to refuse representation to the accused. Such a group-infused refusal by lawyers greatly help the accused, delay the trial and often serves the interest of the guilty; not the public that is waiting to see a swift investigation, trial and verdictin this case that has shocked us like no other.

(The author is a Supreme Court advocate)