Commentary /Vir Sanghvi

Frontier justice has no place in the political mainstream

The judicial system is slow. The cases will take years to come to trial. The politicians will appeal and will drag out the cases for even longer. Hard evidence may be difficult to come by. And at the end of the day, some of them may die before sentence is passed on them.

Far better therefore, to send them all to jail now. It may well be against the principle of natural justice but at least it makes sure that they get some kind of punishment. It sends out a signal that the corrupt will not get away with it and other politicians will heed their example.

I don't want to get into the case for and against encounter deaths. But the parallels between the two justifications must be obvious. Both are about frontier justice: So what if the principles of the law are suspended? At least some people get punished and are made an example of.

But there is one important difference. In the case of encounter deaths, the state of the courts is only one part of the argument. There is also the danger that terrorists or mafia dons would eliminate witnesses.

No such argument applies in this case. The only justification for frontier justice here is the state of the courts.

When L K Advani was chargesheeted in the hawala case, he declared that he wanted hearings to commence immediately and hoped that the verdict would be delivered before the June election. He was being optimistic -- charges have only just been framed and it will be years before the case is settled. And this, in a matter where there is a special judge and a separate court.

Because the courts are overloaded, because there are not enough judges and because Indians are litigious people, the judicialsystem functions so slowly that justice is often not seen to be done. Hence, the middle class despair with the system and the temptation to search for an encounter-type solution.

The judges have now won middle class cheers by sending people to jail and demonstrating that the system still has teeth. It is reassuring to know that a magistrate can move against any citizen no matter how important he is. But there are dangers inherent in this phenomenon.

The fact that a judge can imprison a man does not mean that a system works or that justice is being done. It was during Chief Justice P N Bhagwati's tenure that the Supreme Court recognised that thousands of people were being held in jail without trial. Justice Bhagwati tried to reduce the number, repeating again and again that anybody who has not been convicted is innocent.

I am not sure if Bhagwati's dictum is still remembered. All too often, we seem to confuse charge-sheets with convictions.

Nor do I think that frontier justice has any place in the political mainstream. It may just possibly make sense on the terrorist frontier but it has the potential to destroy the foundations of our entire judicial system.

Alas, we are too busy cheering to recognise this. And we forget to ask the obvious question.

If the justification for frontier justice is the state of the courts, then surely, the immediate priority is to reform the courts, not to earn populist cheers. And yet, while the judiciary has told us what is wrong with Parliament, the CBI, the petroleum ministry, the police force and nearly everything else, it has yet to turn its searching gaze on itself.

Surely, the way to fight corruption is not to jail people without trial. The way to do it is to reform the courts so that trials can take place speedily and the corrupt can be sent to jail after being convicted.

Forget this principle in your glee at seeing Sukh Ram or Narasimha Rao in Tihar and you risk destroying the liberal society.