When the police arrest someone, till the time that they are proven guilty in court and are in police custody, you have the right to state protection. Instead of protection, if they are killed without any trial, it is called custodial killing. Custodial killing and lynching cannot be accepted as justice in a democracy.
Yet, a lot of people are celebrating this step taken by the Hyderabad police, that is otherwise raising a lot of eyebrows. Let’s take a look at the two questions below:
1. Was justice really served without the criminals getting heard in the court of law and proven guilty? There is a lacuna in the laws of the country which cannot always mete out the punishment the offenders actually deserve for the brutal crimes that they have committed.
2. Will this step of the Hyderabad police ensure that similar offenses do not continue to happen in the country?
Judicial systems indeed take time, but if we start killing people in the name of justice, that’s barbarism. Also, why is the so-called justice different for different people? For instance, the accused in the Unnao rape case was acquitted, amongst many.
Those bloodthirsty people, including MPs advocating mobocracy, simply derailed the focal point in the Hyderabad rape and murder issue. When our future generations ask what a fair trial is, we will not know the answer to it. What we need urgently now are fast track courts that actually expedite such cases, and to think hard about the criminal justice system in the country
We caught the terrorist Ajmal Kasab and gave him an opportunity for a fair trial. Why? Because we are the biggest functional democracy in the world.
At the end, all I want to say is, justice delayed is justice denied, and justice hurried is justice buried.