“A mother’s little son, a father’s hope, a sister’s brother and a little boy’s childhood are brutally snatched making him fall into a deep slumber forever. The family then runs around the courts to seek justice for one-and-a-half years, but no results. Is there not an urgent need to reform such judicial system and the criminal law?”
This Facebook post on November 26 midnight by the father of the seven-year-old boy, who was allegedly murdered inside a Bhondsi school toilet by his schoolmate on September 8 last year, speaks volumes about his acute sense of disillusionment with the country’s criminal justice system since trial in the case is yet to begin.
Caught in a slew of appeals and counter-appeals by the prosecution, the defence and the complainant before four different courts — the Supreme Court, the Punjab and Haryana High Court, a Gurugram Court and the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) — for the past year, the case now seems to be back to square one after the High Court on October 11.
The High Court, while hearing an appeal by the defence, directed the JJB to conduct a reassessment of the juvenile in conflict with law (JCL) to decide if will he be treated as an adult or not.
‘Case not on track’
“The High Court order practically means that we are back to where we started a year ago. Left with no option, we moved the Supreme Court challenging the order. The apex court has now stayed proceedings in the case till January 21. This means no progress in the case for two more months,” says the boy’s father, ruing the “the case is still not on track”.
Sounding dejected, the 37-year-old says he is personally involved in the case and understands the legal complexities involved but still finds it hard to explain them to his wife, family and relatives who are frustrated with the cumbersome legal process.
“They fail to understand why the case is still lingering even after all this time, especially when there was clinching evidence against the juvenile,” asserts the father.
Across three States
A quality assurance manager at a private textile firm, he says it has been a challenge for him to manage his job, family and the case over the past year. He is on leave for about 10 days each month so that he can make rounds of the courts in Chandigarh, Delhi and Gurugram.
Struggling to regain his composure, he says the image of his son, whose throat was slit, lying on a hospital bed still haunts him.
“I shudder with pain and anger when I think of my injured son trying to seek help that day in the toilet after the attack. The last few moments of his life were painful... Whenever I think about him, I fail to get sleep the whole night,” he says.
Angry over the lack of exemplary action against the school authorities, he says the government taking over the management of the school for three months after the incident was actually meant to help them fix all the shortcomings. If the government was serious about taking action against the school, he says, it would have either taken it over or disaffiliated it.
He says that though same evidence was produced before the Gurugram police and Central Bureau of Investigation, the former seems doubtful as they failed to nab the “real culprit”.
‘Falsely implicated’
Though the CBI submitted the charge sheet with a murder charge against the JCL on February 5, the supplementary charge sheet on the role of the Gurugram police, who allegedly falsely implicated a school bus conductor and extorted a confession from him, and the school authorities is yet to be filed even after nine months.
In another blow to the family, the Investigation Officer in the case, Deputy Superintendent of Police Ajay Bassi, was transferred during the recent turmoil in the CBI. Mr. Bassi was also the Investigation Officer in the Rakesh Asthana case.
“We are worried that Mr. Bassi’s transfer will impact the case adversely since he was associated with it from the beginning,” says the father. Meanwhile, seven more petitions, five by the defence and one each by the CBI and the complainant, are pending before the High Court. These include a petition by the CBI to transfer the trial to Panchkula. If the case is transferred to Panchkula, the father thinks it may get delayed further. “The judicial system seems to give ample opportunity to the accused but justice to the victim is not its priority. The accused can take justice for a ride if he has the money power,” says the father.
His counsel Sushil Tekriwal says procedural constraints, warrant of statutory followings, frequent appellate recourse, the botched initial investigation culminating into the most complex situations, alleged involvement of well-connected people adopting influential methods, and unfolding of the sequence of events one after another are major reasons for the delay in the final charge sheet and commencement of trial.
“The entire case is trapped in a see-saw of law, which was amended substantially after the Nirbhaya incident. But this amendment is very complicated and frustrates the real objective behind it. This is both unfortunate and a travesty of justice,” says Mr. Tekriwal. He argues that despite ample constraints there were numerous cases which were tried and concluded in a time-bound manner. In many horrific incidents, trials were completed in a very short span of time and could have been done in this case also, he says and adds that their application to this effect is pending before the High Court.
“The overall current judicial system is, no doubt, absolutely pathetic but ironically enough the only ray of hope too. Unless vacancies are filled and a timeline is followed strictly for speedy disposal of cases, justice will be a mockery Speedy trial is a fundamental right but its pragmatic realisation is a distant dream,” says Mr. Tekriwal.