We have a minister who shuffles his time between visiting Courts and presenting budgets...
We have a movie star who is remanded for hunting down endangered species but has the backing of the whole industry...
We still have criminals who are at large. We still have the Dawoods and the Rajans. We still have corrupt police men...This is to bring the facts about one such cruelty that was left unpunished...
I was surprised to read this -- "Jessica Lal murderers set free"
I, for a moment, thought to be dreaming. For me, this was an open and shut case. The police, for a change have proven their keenness to punish the culprits. Alas, that was not to be.
The rich and spoilt brat of a former minister, Siddharth Vashist alias Manu Sharma, shot a former model Jessica Lal for refusing him a drink in a party. There were high profile witnesses to this incident. One among them was the owner of the bar, Bina Ramani, a high profile socialite in Delhi.
The witnesses vouched to have seen the culprit asking Jessica for a drink. Some of them even recognized Manu. But most of them turned hostile in the court. Most of them, including the eye witness Shayaan Munshi, have told the court that they were either not at the scene or just left the party.
The Court had no choice, but to release the high profile culprit. Reasons being, not enough evidences and inability to establish the sequence of events. The question now is, is this the right verdict??
There will certainly be views and counter views. But, the thing everyone has to agree is that the Indian judiciary is still not giving enough due to circumstantial evidence. This is another case of the rich getting away with the law even with so much evidence stacked against him.
There may be stray incidents where the high profile culprits are punished. There's a Laloo or a Jaya here and there. But the fact is, no high profile culprit has ever completed his jail term. Be it Laloo or be it Jaya. They all have managed to get bails and rule the roost. This leaves me with a despairing thought --- "It happens only in INDIA..."
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