By Dr. K. Javed Nayeem, MD

Some time ago, I had an occasion to write an article about how a petty thief who had stolen a pair of buffaloes and a calf in Karnataka, was nabbed far away in Maharashtra, a full fifty-seven years after he had committed the crime. The man, who had indulged in the theft in the year 1965, when he was just a twenty-year-old, daily wage-earning lad, was a full seventy-seven years old, when he was apprehended in 2023, for a crime, which he himself perhaps had forgotten and even atoned for.

But although God himself had perhaps accepted his repentance and had forgiven him too, the long arm of the law had not forgotten his peccadillo and had kept the dossier on him open and alive at the Police Station, where the now long deceased complainant had lodged his grievance.

It is a different matter that this same, conscientious long arm of the law, very often, not just fails to take cognisance of more grievous crimes, of the most horrific and despicable kind but even rubs elbows, day in and day out, with the perpetrators. That is why, we see a million times more grinning criminals, disdainfully thumbing their noses at our law makers and legal system and roaming scot-free, than those who are actually paying for their crimes. Sometimes we even get to see the other extreme side of justice going far beyond its legitimate role and punishing helpless people with penalties which they simply do not deserve.

Just a few weeks ago, I had written about another horrible case of the miscarriage of justice, where a completely innocent villager was arrested and incarcerated in jail for a full two years, for the murder of his wife which he never committed. In fact, there was no murder at all, in this strange case. It is just that his wife, who was perhaps bored with him and fascinated with someone else, went missing and the Police decided that because they had to show themselves as prompt and efficient in their duty, decided to take the shortest route to fame. So, they arrested the hapless husband and made him identify an unidentified body as that of his wife and then tortured him into admitting that he had indeed killed her.

The path of justice then took the man straight to jail where he languished for a full two years, till a friend of his informed him that he had seen his wife happily sitting in a hotel, in the company of another man. This discovery too would not have brought the miserably poor man any succour, had it not been for the kindness of a proactive, service-minded lawyer, who stepped in to get him the justice he deserved, completely free of cost.

Although his tale of torture had a happy ending with his acquittal, there was not much real happiness for him because the two years our law-keepers and legal system had stolen from his life, cannot be gifted back to him. Moreover, the social stigma and disgrace of being labelled a murderer, not just in people’s minds but in the minds of his two little children, for a full two years, will always remain an inerasable pain in his heart, for which society has just no remedy.

When I wrote about the strange case of this most unfortunate man, I had likened it to the story, ‘God sees the truth but waits’ by the famous Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, where the innocent protagonist, Ivan Dmitritch Aksionov suffers a similar fate, with no reprieve till his death.

KBG, the Founder-Editor of SOM, after reading my article, called me up and we had a very long discussion about how unfair life sometimes can be and particularly about Tolstoy’s rationale in giving that title to his story where God, who always sees the truth, sadly decides to wait until it is too late, even for him to help the innocent man. This led to a discussion of some of Tolstoy’s other writings, when I suggested to KBG that he should read his very iconic book, ‘The Resurrection’ which deals with a very similar theme, and which with its many twists and turns, makes it some very sad but gripping reading.

To make it easy for him, I gifted him a copy of the book, after reading which he called me up again. This time, it was to tell me that it was perhaps a sad coincidence that while we were discussing cases of the miscarriage of justice, there was another such incident where very recently, a hundred-and-four-year-old, completely innocent man was released from jail on May 23, 2025, after being incarcerated for forty-three years. Yes, you read me right.

A barely able to walk, Lakhan Pal, was recently released from Kaushambi Jail after being acquitted by the Allahabad High Court. He had been imprisoned along with three other suspects, on charges of murder in the year 1977. Although the four were long ago acquitted of all the charges against them, they could not secure their release for ‘technical reasons’, whatever that means, to the law and its enforcers. Eventually, Lakhan’s long due release had to be facilitated by the District Legal Services Authority (DLSA), but by the time this happened, his two other fellow prisoners had died, with justice being denied to them, while one had been released, only because he was found to be too sick and feeble to be looked after in jail.

The question that comes to my mind here, is what sense of relief, let alone happiness, will this feeble, innocent old man experience, with the miserably moth-eaten justice that has been doled out to him? And, what does this kind of justice speak of our very tall claim to being highly civilised human beings? It is perhaps this kind of unjust justice, that Mark Anthony refers to, upon Julius Caesar’s assassination when he says: Justice, O Justice, thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason! Do think about it!

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