All four men accused in the gang-rape and murder of a young veterinarian in Telangana were killed in a Police encounter at Chatanpally and the testing time is over. The young woman’s rape and murder had triggered shock and horror across the nation after her body, badly burnt, was found last week near Hyderabad. As a common citizen, I am feeling happy that this was the end we all wanted for them. But this end was supposed to be through the legal system. Justice should have delivered to the victim through proper channels but it will take its own time. The judiciary has been running from pillar to post for the last 7 years to get Nirbhaya’s culprits hanged to death. Justice has been delivered at the hands of police and in the name of encounter. Let the rapists learn a lesson now.
It could have been better had these four accused were chained up and paraded on streets of Hyderabad and then given severe punishment. However, it is good that they had finally met with their own sad fate. Purists’ will question whether it is authentic. ‘Pragmatists’ will ‘look the other way’ contending that it is OK in exceptional cases where the crime is as clear as daylight. This is likely to be the majority opinion. But media, for obvious reasons, cannot approve it instantly without acceptable evidence, which is also right.
It was a heinous crime which requires severe punishment to the culprit of this crime. The agitation which was taking Pan India shape will die down immediately. Police does not need to go through the arduous task of collecting evidences, make a case and present in a court of law. Political masters also got relief, and victims family too. What a easy solution to a difficult problem. It may also bring peace to all those who were demanding death to culprits.
The Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s rule is different from others. He had handled the RTC strike with iron hand. The judicial process is very slow and people are losing faith in the justice. In the Delhi Nirbhaya case justice is yet to be delivered. Hope that one day our country judiciary will also be fast in delivering and executing the judgement that common people have faith in judicial system to serve justice than to rely on encounters to provide speedy justice.
Justice would have been done only when the women are able to walk the streets without fear of mental and physical humiliation. Rape is a form of humiliation, showing that I can do anything to you and don’t care for how you feel about it. It is a sad reflection on how, despite the cultural celebration of women in this country as mothers and sisters, the male dominion does not perceive them so when they are in public spaces. We must hang our heads low and atone for our omissions as a society.
When the CM of the state directed that the judicial processes of the case be expedited through a fast track court, and, further, when the Hyderabad Police decided to constitute a team of 50 officers to conduct a thorough investigation of the case, it sounds impossible that the accused would have had any chance to either snatch the weapons of the policemen who were taking them to the crime scene to reconstruct the event. The four should have been produced before court of law to award them the punishment they deserved. The supremacy of the law – even if in the end in this case, would have been death for the quartet – should not have been devalued.
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
