Trigger warning: Mentions of rape
Vishnu Tiwari was set free from Lalitpur jail after having spent 20 years in the Lalitpur prison, ‘wrongly convicted’ on charges of rape.
I doubt if our state is going to take his responsibility for having made him stick in the rot. Who will ensure his claims and compensations for the years gone by? There was no one for him except for a few independent activists, academicians and journalists who took up his case in their capacity to ensure his honour and dignity. The point is who will take his responsibility now for the loss of the previous years of his life?
Nobody seems literally ready to do so, same as when Kamlesh Tiwari a right-wing Hindu leader was assassinated in broad daylight in Lucknow. The so-called liberal commentators punctually condemned and criticised this ghastly act jumping in to contest the communal angle. But, where were they when Ankit Tiwari who worked as an executive with Apple was shot dead by the Uttar Pradesh police in Lucknow?
Is it so that the judiciary is no more the bastion of orderly justice but of endless agony and pain? The courtroom hearings also do little in bringing us relief and respite from the tedious and tiring processes and procedures exhausting us physically, socially and economically.
Vishnu Tiwari’s release demands that the Uttar Pradesh government should arrange for his employment by offering him some suitable profile aiding and ensuring his welfare and wellbeing. But in an effort, the system is looking forward to systematic structural reforms to contest the charges that have often been pressed against it.
Injustice anywhere leads to injustice everywhere.