The Law In Retreat

THE murder of a 52-year-old American in a Delhi Hotel would not have merited a comment had it not been one of a disturbing series of stories that have appeared in recent months about attacks on and murders of foreign tourists in India. The number of such crimes is still small, but like water dripping into a bucket, they are beginning to form a pool that is changing foreigners' perception of India as an exceptionally safe place. This is happening not so much because of the crimes as the reluctance of the police to carry out a proper investigation.

Some months ago, the Sunday Times had carried a story of the Parbati valley in Kulu where, over the years, more than a dozen British tourists had disappeared or died in mysterious circumstances. The police had written off these deaths as cases of drug overdose, gone through the motions of waiting for someone to claim the body, and then cremated it. Not only were the relatives often left in the dark, but they also could not claim the bodies to give them a decent burial. In so remote a spot, the police may have had no option, but their uniformly unhelpful attitude inevitably gave rise to the suspicion that they might have been hand-in-glove with drug racketeers, for the Parbati valley is a spot where opium is clandestinely grown.

The impression of unhelpfulness has been reinforced by another report in local newspapers of how only the determination of John Helly, a London policeman, to find his brother's killers enabled the arrest and trial of three hotel employees in Goa who had first (allegedly) drugged and then murdered him in December 1991. The Goa police were not only uncooperative, but approached the case with only one purpose-to prove that no local person was involved. When Helly turned up a blood-stained shirt belonging to one of the hotel's employees, the Goa police took another four years to do a dna test. Even that required the combined intervention of a British MP and a senior Indian diplomat in London.

Helly's story is far from unique. It, and several others like it, have drawn media attention only because foreigners were involved. For Indians, especially poor Indians, there has, for some time, been virtually no law and no justice. Releasing a book on the police in Delhi last week, Justice D.P. Wadhwa of the Supreme Court remarked that the rate of conviction in criminal cases in India was among the worst in the world, and that as a consequence, the people had lost faith in the police and the judiciary.

This observation does not even begin to plumb the depths of Indians' disenchantment with, and fear of, the governments they elect. For them, not only is there no law, but the law actively connives with the rich and powerful to enforce their writ on society. The links begin right at the top in Parliament and the state legislatures, and are forged at each level thereafter. Hardly a day passes now without a story in some newspaper about a dreaded criminal with powerful political connections. Rajan Tewari, a well-known contract killer from UP, stays in one MP's house in Delhi, and is allegedly given a contract to kill a crusading policeman in UP by a second MP. In UP, an mla of the Bahujan Samaj Party, Mukhtar Ansari, allegedly runs a gang that specialises in kidnapping for ransom, followed by murder.

When members of the gang were caught while planning another kidnapping in Bangalore and a dig went down to Bangalore to record his confession, he came back to find that the CM had transferred him.

Kidnapping for ransom has become a national pastime. After a few sensational murders, no one in Bombay even dares to report extortion threats to the police. The disease has spread to Delhi. In Delhi, Romesh Sharma was (allegedly) setting up a base of operations for Dawood Ibrahim, and was taped assuring his lieutenant that he would take care of a particular murder himself (allegedly). He forced 34 persons to virtually hand over their flats, houses, farms and even a helicopter to him for a song, but so good were Sharma's connections that when several of these persons went to the police they ignored them. Even the cbi found the local police unhelpful.

Among politicians, contempt for justice knows no bounds. Phoolan Devi kills more than a hundred people in bestial ways, and is given a ticket to Parliament. Most of the 34 mlas who defect to the bjp in UP in 1997 have criminal connections and 19 have criminal records. They all become ministers! Can policemen be blamed for coming to the conclusion that doing their duty could endanger their promotions, possibly also their lives? From not investigating local murders to not investigating the suspicious deaths of foreigners is only a small step.

The judicial system is not much better. Logjammed with arrears of more than a million cases at the high court level, the denial of justice through delay has become routine. But if you are rich or influential, you can weigh even this routine heavily in your favour. You can 'speak to' the police, the prosecuting attorney, even the judge, and plea bargain your punishment into insignificance. Better still, you could get them to indict you on a more severe charge than the evidence will sustain (murder instead of manslaughter) and walk away scot-free. If the police, under-equipped and undermanned, do manage to get a case to court, they come up against 'enlightened' evidence laws. Enlightened, that is to say from the point of view of the culprit. Small wonder that there are so few convictions. And horror of horrors, if the police do get a conviction, there is always the appeal.

History, they say, repeats itself. If that is so, then India is back in the days of the later Mughals. The Centre's writ runs fitfully at best, and mostly around Delhi. In the rest of India, the Pindaris and Rohillas rule the roost.