Some weeks ago, I chanced upon the Indian justice system in action. Having had spent most of my life in Saudi Arabia, I couldn't let the opportunity pass: I just had to get a feel of what could be in store for me if ever, God forbid, I had to seek legal recourse in my home country. So there I was in small-town India waiting in a dingy courtroom with my aunt, her lawyer, a cop in civvies, and a dopey court assistant slumped into a wobbly chair in front of a desk-pile of dusty case-papers. Every now and then, a nondescript middle-aged man would emerge from behind a curtain in a corner, looking very important, deep in thought and the least bit interested in us. Seeing him, the assistant would leap to his feet and humbly trail him to wherever all that importance would lead to in the cavernous building, and all the way back right up to the frayed curtain over which a hand-written sign said “Chamber.” “The judge,” our lawyer bent forward to whisper, his eyes pointed to the sloppy sign. We had driven nearly six hours from Bangalore to reach this bustling south Indian town where the court is the centerpiece. It's a grand red-stone edifice inherited from its grander days of British rule. But, once inside, past the sprawling leafy grounds where lawyers in black robes dart about like bats, trying to avoid their human prey of litigants, it comes across as a tumbledown place where even the solid concrete stairs of the three-storied buiding have sagged in the middle from the ups and downs of justice perpetually delayed and not seldom jinxed. The Indian court system is seriously flawed, as anybody will agree who's still following the suspiciously prolonged legal attempts to book Hindu fanatics L. K. Advani for the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition and his protége, Chief Minister Narendra Modi, for the 2002 genocide of Muslims in Gujarat. To enter the court system is to court disaster, everyone knows. Cases can drag on for years because of a high number of vacant posts for judges and a low judges-to-population ratio – 12 per million population in India in 2004 compared to the world standard of 50. Supreme court lawyer Prashant Bhushan, who is spearheading a movement for judicial reforms, said in a talk delivered last month at Princeton University that Indian courts enjoy “virtually absolute and unchecked power unrivaled by any court in the world.” The court, citing the Constitution, can strike down executive action and even legislation. Its directions have to be obeyed by all on pain of contempt of court. In 2004, the Public Interest Litigation jurisdiction further empowered the courts to order anything that individual judges consider to be in public interest – this while there is no institution or system to scrutinize the performance of judges or investigate complaints against them. According to the Delhi-based Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reform (CJAR), “the higher judiciary is a self-perpetuating oligarchy steeped in corruption.” In the absence of an independent institution for the selection of judges, the judiciary often makes appointments in an arbitary, non-transparent and nepotistic manner, which makes it convenient for politicians to use judges to perennially delay cases and cover up their crimes. Bhushan says that in order to move an impeachment motion against a corrupt judge, “you need the signatures of 100 MPs, but you can't get them because many MPs have pending individual or party cases in these judges' courts.” Lack of accountability coupled with enormous unchecked powers, he says, makes the judiciary “a very dangerous institution and indeed a serious threat to Indian democracy.” So there we were against this backdrop, waiting in the courtroom while the cop and the lawyer went through the motions of concluding their kill for the day. They got my aunt to sign a few papers and then showed her a small cloth pouch which they said contained her stolen gold chain. My aunt had lost her gold chain to a thief nearly two years ago during a brief stop for lunch in the town while heading for the east coast with her husband and daughter. The thief had struck while they were replacing a flat tire of their car parked in front of the restaurant. He had snatched her purse containing the gold chain, some cash, keys, and bank cards and simply slipped into the throng of passers-by. None of the amused onlookers had helped. My aunt had no choice but to file a complaint with the local police and leave. Then, out of the blue nearly two years later, she received a phone call from a lawyer who said he was representing her. We've got the culprit and the chain, he said, come and collect it. It's not the kind of thing you normally expect in India, even if you keep pestering the cops as my aunt had done. We were made to wait in the court from 9 A.M. to nearly 6 in the evening. In between, we had to fetch the court-authorized goldsmith who we were told could be found sleeping half-naked under a roadside tree in front of a crush of small shops a short drive away. We found him, found his bag of tools for him, and brought him to the court office where he sat on the floor, did his tests and proclaimed that the chain was 36 grams of 22 carat gold. That done, and with moments to go before the court day ended, the cop and the lawyer called my aunt aside. They showed her the gold chain. It wasn't hers. “But tell the judge it's yours because you'll never find your chain,” the cop said, ushering my aunt and her self-appointed lawyer into the chamber. Inside the hallowed chamber, the judge went through the case papers. My aunt, by now all flustered, waited for the worst. “She knows, doesn't she?” the judge said to her surprise, addressing the cop-lawyer team. “You've told her, haven't you?” The two sheepishly succumbed. The judge then signed the papers, got my aunt to sign them too, and handed over the chain in an envelope. Outside the room, we read the verdict and found out that we should produce the very same chain at some later date in court when my aunt would have to testify against a jailed suspect who had probably not stolen her chain. The case could drag on for a few more years. We paid the goldsmith for his services and the lawyer for getting out of our sight. All the way back, we argued over the should-haves and must-do's. Justice was clearly undone. And we too were tainted. – SG Feedback: [email protected] __
