The Supreme Court’s judgment quashing the order of the Gujarat government granting remission to 11 rapist-murderers who were sentenced to life imprisonment for their crime in 2002 does two things simultaneously — It exposes the patronage criminals of the worst order can expect to get in India, and it compels every Indian to remain hopeful about the institutions of democracy. It also gives people a chance to reassure themselves that the fortitude of one person still has space in this country to fight her war and take it to its logical end.
A simplistic look at the judgment would make many think that the court merely set aside a decision of the Gujarat government as it had no power to take that decision and allowed the criminals to seek remission before the Maharashtra government. True, the court has not stopped them from availing legal options that are open to them.
However, the judgment has chronicled that which went wrong with the administration of criminal justice in a case of unparalleled human cruelty and hence a government that would want to set the rapist-murderers free will have to deploy logical and legal arguments that can overwhelm those advanced in the judgment. And while doing so, it would run the risk of entering the list of institutions and people who did injustice to a pregnant young woman who lost 14 of her relatives, including her own parents, toddler and the child in her womb, in a gruesome sequence of violence.
The Gujarat police of 2002 which refused to investigate the case despite the victim giving details of the perpetrators of the crime, the Supreme Court bench which allowed itself to be fooled by the chicanery of the convicts and the Union home ministry which rushed through the petitions for clemency already figure on this list as do the officials who sent “positive reports” seeking clemency for them. It is open to the Maharashtra government to elect to be a part of this list, should the convicts approach it.
The nation must thank Bilkis Bano, the victim, and the people and organisations that stood by her in the long fight unmindful of the series of reverses, for their struggle will inspire people who have lost their faith in the institutions of democracy. It is more than two decades now that she has been chasing her tormenters who enjoyed the protection of the powers-that-be. While it is the job of the State to hunt down and punish criminals, by a quirk of fate, that job fell on the modest shoulders of this warrior. And she did not disappoint. In the process, she even provided the highest court of the land an opportunity to correct itself. What a feat!
What has come from the Supreme Court now is a compelling treatise on the paramountcy of the rule of law in a democracy and a reminder to the governments in the states and at the Centre that “courts have to be mindful not only of the spelling of the word ‘justice’ but also the content of the concept”. Lest we forget.
