Salman Khan, Jayalalitha and Ramalinga Raju are just the celebrities, there must be hundreds of other cases where the lower courts have found accused guilty, delivered strong sentences and virtually sent out a message of strong and equal action in the eyes of law.
And then, a superior / higher court upturns the verdict, delivers a stay or acquittal and delivers an opinion that contradicts the lower court. So what does that mean?
- That the lower courts are just a means to infuse some caution to defaulters, while also providing employment to a large number in the legal and administrative fraternity?
- That the judges in these courts aren’t as well versed in the provisions in the law and that they are always leaving something open enough for the case to be turned upside down later?
- That it takes years and years of cross examination, document preparation, postponements, adjournments, undelivered subpoena and missing witnesses for a judge in the lower court to arrive at a decision, but takes the superior court only a few days to find enough holes like a fishing net to completely understand, probe and reverse the decisions?
- That the very law is constructed to provide superficial impressions of justice with a judge who walks away with recognition, who is then completely forgotten once the case is dropped at the higher court.
- And if the lower courts actually overlooked key points strong enough to reverse their very work, shouldn’t they be booked for negligence and waste of public time and money? Don’t maintaining these courts and judges all cost us money? Who is paying for the 13 years of conducting Salman’s case, for instance?
What is in the judicial system that makes everything look shabby, unbelievable, untrustworthy and stupid? It’s high time to overhaul the legal and judicial system. All the courts must be made to work in tandem and the judgments should not differ so drastically between the lower and the upper courts. The ruling and observations made by the lower courts must be thoroughly taken cognizance of and relied upon too by the higher courts while awarding bails, punishments and so on. The speed and the initiative with which the courts work for the VVIP “convicts” in granting bails etc, must be followed and extended when it comes to the “common-man-convicts” too.
Isn’t it a fact that thousands of “just accused convicts” are languishing in jails for years – just because they are unable to get the courts to take up their cases for suitable disposal? At least half of them are certainly not criminals or really accused but due to their misfortune have landed up behind the bars. But, as they are not in a position to get good lawyers to represent them to manage the court proceedings and get bails and perhaps due to their economic background too, they are stay put in jails even if they are really not guilty.
Above all, there must be a time frame for the “Bail period and validity”. We have cases where high profile people / VIPs have been found guilty in scams but have obtained bail, come out of jails and roam free for life!
Let us not make a mockery of the Indian judicial system and the also the value and the relevance of lower courts in our country.
ANAND SIVA-KRISHNA KUMAR
