It took 23 long years for the Central Bureau of Investigation to secure convictions and penalties against the accused in Rs 133 crore urea scam in which top politicians, including then prime minister P V Narasimha Rao’s kin were involved. Only on Friday did CBI special court deliver its verdict with fines of up to Rs 100 crore on Ankara-based company Karsan, its top officials Tuncay Alankus and Cihan Karanchi, their Indian agents, related to top Congress politicians etc. Urea scam could be considered a ‘classical case’ falling into open and shut category. But never ending sloppy investigation, unwinding and complicated judicial rigmarole have made the verdict irrelevant.

While this was the first major media expose after the Bofors scandal, the verdict has come too late in the day and delivers very little. While bribe givers from Turkey were handed a larger punishment, their Indian agents with connections were let off lightly. Most interestingly, the eight fraudsters convicted to jail terms ranging from three to six years could seek review in Supreme Court even today. It means the final word is not yet out on the fraud where 100 per cent advance totaling to $ 38 million was prepaid and not a granule of 200,000 metric tonnes was received by state-run NFL.

It is high time that the judiciary pays attention  to streamline systems, processes, methodology and work towards rooting out corruption within their ilk. These honoured judicial officers are the last man standing to protect the rights of the citizenry as the executive either abdicates authority or gets bellicose. While millions of cases ranging from frauds, family silver disputes to public interest litigations pile up across local courts to Supreme Court over decades, the judicial system at every level needs to refocus its energies on delivering expeditious judgements.

Urea scam is a one off case that could have never even seen light of the day. The courts or the Central Bureau of Investigation could not solve the case of then railways minister Lalit Narayan Misra’s sensational murder at Samastipur railway station for over 40 years. Only on November 10, 2014 did the CBI court convict four accused for just four years. Several others have even passed away before the justice was delivered. Dozens of cases relating to high profile Bofors, fodder, coal or telecom spectrum scams to latest banking frauds may never ever get resolved in our life time given the systemic failure, lethargy and inaction that has sucked the courts and investigation agencies into its vortex.

Reforming our judiciary and investigative agencies should become a priority if our noisy democracy is to work. Several reports, commissions and expert panels recommendations have been gathering dust to reform these moribund institutions that are vital to public life. Here too, very little seems to have moved. We remain a dysfunctional democracy.