Justice Killed

Imagine this..... around 30 children disappear in span of 2 years in and around a town called Nithari, a stonethrow away from capital city of Delhi and nobody did anything, nobody knew anything. Untill, of course skeletons of these children were discovered in a house of a rich man in Nithari.

This shows yet again how well our society is policed against crime. What was Police doing for all these years when these kids were disappearing, all within radius of few kilometers!! Yeah, well these things happen. Crime happens. Pshycopaths exist. But so does the Police. Why did Police not act!. Or forget acting, Police in India always reacts. They need a complaint and then they investigate. So lets say if Police has videographic evidence of group of rowdy youth molesting a young women in crowd celeberating new year, they dont do anything about it since there is no complaint. How Crazy is this.

But in case of Nithari, the issue is far more serious and is an idication (yet again) of what a bad state our Police is in. Apparently, Police in Nithari did not even register FIRs of parents whose children were disappearing. And this was because these people belong to lower income group, they are migrants from hinterland, live in shacks and do petty jobs to make a living. They are socially inferior. Police is not obliged to protect them or even listen to their complaints. They are the outcast, the lower class. Most of them are not aware of their rights as citizens because they are not educated. Police is a power which they are afraid of. Some of parents were told by police that "itne bacche paida karte ho phir hum unko dhoondte rahen kya!" or "tumhare bacche ko seher ke hawa lag gayi, bhaag gaya wo". These statements by a law enforcing agency represents how we are as a society, a very prejudiced society, afterall Police is also made up of people from among us. We are prejudiced agianst those who are below us in social ladder, who are under previliged. We treat them differently than those who are equivalent to us (middle classes!!) or higher than us. They almost never get heard , forget about the justice. I mean , all the media, print or elctronic, all the institutions are run by middle class (more on it later).

Anybody who has any experience with Police in India would know that most of people are scared of approaching the Police. They are corrupt (again our society is such) like most of our other institutions. But since they (Police) have tremendous power their being corrupt is extremely dangerous for a society. I was wondering how many movies we have where policemen are depicted as corrupt and protectors of crime itself. Even if we have to discount the dramatic exaggeration of Bollywood, it still reflects on a reality which can not be ignored. That Police, a very vital of instituion in a democracy for protecting law, has serious problems in India. So serious, that a large mass of our people can never trust it for justice.

There can not be a true democracy in a society when it is prejudiced, when justice is not delivered to large segment of people, when law does not treat evey citizen equally regradless of his/her class, cast or creed. There can not be democracy where most of our people are afraid of a law enforcing agency. There can not be democracy when justice is denied to lower classes and is bought by higher classes.

A democracy wihout equality and justice is sham, absolutely sham. A society can be judged by how it treats those who are less fortunate and by that standard ours is a society which has a long way to go. We dont become a developed country (forget being a superpower) just by gliterring shopping malls and high rate of GDP growth...well not untill a poor, uneducated, migrant can fearlessly approach Police and register complaint of his missing child. Atleast he deserves that much of right in a civilised , law abiding country.