Justice is served - but how?

Today morning, I woke up to the news that the culprits of the recent horrendous rape and murder in Hyderabad were killed in an encounter.

The emotional and human side of me felt tremendous relief. Justice had been served and served quickly. These animals deserved what they got. Maybe they deserved more, but it’s not in my hands to decide that.

But my other skeptical and emotionless side, felt slightly suspicious of whether this encounter really happened or was it staged.

The encounter apparently happened when the culprits were taken to the scene of the crime for a reconstruction of the crime. During the course of questioning the culprits tried to snatch weapons from police officials and attempted to escape. They also tried to pelt stones on the police. God knows why they tried to do that, when in all probability, they knew there was no hope of escape. Maybe they wanted to spare themselves the long and arduous courtroom drama and decided to take the short way out.

The police claim that they had to kill the perpetrators as an act of self-defense. All four of them died on the spot.

There was a huge outpouring of relief and happiness on social media today on hearing the news, especially from women. Many felt relieved that justice was served without the usual time consuming courtroom legal rigmarole. The police officer and his team which carried out the encounter were feted as heroes and received glowing tributes.

I thoroughly stand by the Police when they say that theirs’ was an act of self-defense. But a small, skeptic part of me just questions this. I don’t want to sound like Kejriwal and ask for proof of whether the encounter was real or staged.

If the encounter wasn't staged, then the culprits deserved to die like the dogs they were. God knows, they deserved a much worse punishment than this.

But if the encounter was staged, then it’s a different matter. Maybe the Police were right in disposing of the criminals this way. But then, I can’t help thinking whether the people who are responsible for maintaining law and order have themselves taken the law into their own hands; something which even they are not entitled to do. After all, the Police and the judiciary are the watchmen of the law. They are responsible to ensure that people who deviate from the law are swiftly brought to justice. But is this the right way to give justice?

We have laws, we have a judicial system and we have a legal procedure. And as law abiding citizens, we are supposed to follow them. The Indian Penal Code specifies appropriate punishments for any crime, depending on it’s severity. So when things take a U-turn as in this case, we are forced to retrospect and investigate as to why this kind of a solution was needed in the first place. Was this the only way out?

At the core, the root cause of this incident probably lies with the deep-rooted mistrust towards the Indian judicial system and the manner and time in which it deals with these type of cases. If this encounter did not happen, things would have proceeded normally. There would have been a long legal procedure involving courtroom proceedings and a lot of hearings. All this would have taken a huge amount of time. And each time, the family members of the victim would have to go through the trauma of reliving the details of the gory incident time and again. God knows they have suffered enough already. Maybe this would have added more misery to them. No human being and a family person deserve to endure what they have gone through. Time will probably make them come to terms with what had happened, but it will no way lessen their pain.

As I stated earlier, given the complexity of how our legal system handles these cases, was this the only way out? Instead of resorting to solutions such as these, would it not be better if our legal system was spruced up to handle these cases in a more efficient and effective manner, without the need to resort to drastic measures? If we all have to look for out of the box solutions, why then should we have the box in the first place?

This incident should serve as wake-up call to make our system more transparent and effective.

If there is anything positive which has emerged from this horrible incident, it is that people have become more aware of the dangers faced by women and how vulnerable they are. We should spread awareness and take adequate measures to ensure safety of women and citizens in general.