A few days back I received a WhatsApp video sent by one Dr. A.M. Nagesh, Member of Mysuru Open Forum (MOF). Its title ‘Roar for Justice’ and it is a song most melodiously rendered but melancholic for its theme was such which could be known from the title of the song itself.

The opening lines surprisingly and eerily sync with what happened in Kolkata on Aug. 9 in RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, where a lady doctor was brutally raped and killed. The opening lines of the lyric reads: “In the quiet of the night, a tragedy unfolds, A young healer’s life, so brutally stolen cold,… Together we’ll fight, we’ll settle the score… Let’s unite, let’s rise, let’s fight for her soul…”

No doubt, this song was about the lady doctor who was raped and murdered. Now the question is about getting justice. So the roar.

Be that as it may, I am worried about the callous irresponsibility and total deficiency in the service of our criminal law-enforcing authorities, Police and our Judiciary. The strength of a chain is in its weakest link. If so, these two are the weakest links in our democratic administration of law and order and hence so much of social disturbance and injustice to the meek and the helpless.

The rich and the powerful escape from any crime with impunity. But the poor and the powerless are caught in the web of criminal and civil laws unable to get justice and suffer. Suffer in jail or reduced to penury fighting the court cases. Our country never lacked legal luminaries and some of them were giants of the Bar before and after independence. Despite this advantage those giants could not guarantee us a Police and Judiciary that would serve us well.

So also on Judicial Bench — great Judges adorned those high chair of Solomon’s wisdom. But alas, the very same scholars of jurisprudence compromised when India got independence and followed the same colonial laws that were inequitable and unfair. Against natural justice. Totally in favour of the rulers, the rich and the influential.

You would get a glimpse if only you had looked at the Kolkata Jail manual, about which late Ram Jethmalani, the famous criminal lawyer and a Union Minister, had exposed long back. Even when the offence and sentence were same, the white convict would be treated differently provided with comfort while the native would suffer the jail misery.

When I was a junior advocate in early 1960s in Bengaluru, I was a witness to this inequity in the application, especially, of criminal laws. As a young idealist, I mentioned it to my senior who simply laughed at me and said, ‘We are legal practitioners, not law changers.’ I kept my mouth shut.

Thank God, now in the year of our Lord 2023, 75 years after independence, as if by divine will, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has written new criminal laws for free, independent, sovereign India that is Bharat. They are:

The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA).

The new laws replaced the British-era Indian Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Evidence Act respectively.

I am happy, this happened during my life time. But there are other areas of an Indian’s life like land, official hierarchy, education, civil laws and laws relating to places of worship (belonging to majority and minority communities) where there is much discrimination and injustice. No religion should claim special treatment by the State nor violate the State law in the name of the Holy books or Holy scriptures or a religious priest or master.

We may have changed the old, colonial order of the criminal laws, but have we changed the old order of Judiciary? Should a civil case be fought in the First Court, Second Court, Third Court, High Court and the Highest Supreme Court for generations as is now?

As I know it was Supreme Court Judge late Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer who first propounded the theory in pithy words, ‘Bail is rule, Jail is exception’ or to that effect. Today we are seeing the Supreme Court affirming and applying the same principle. Hope in the new criminal laws, BNS, BNSS and BSA this question  is addressed.

Bringing in the new criminal law by itself will not bring in the desired and needed change and efficiency for the litigants. It is possible only when  the Judiciary is also reformed along-side the new criminal laws. Hope this too will happen, but may be after my life time!

This brings to my mind the evil of judicial delay and the dictum ‘Justice delayed is justice denied.’ I will discuss the consequence of this delay in my next column.

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