Vimal Sumbly
While no sane person can condone rape and murder, the current agitation in Jammu for seeking a CBI probe into the brutal incident is deliberately and maliciously being damned and demonised as to be “supporting and siding with the rapists”. How does the demand for a CBI probe mean supporting the rapists? In fact, in such cases the CBI is the ideal agency to probe the matter as doubts and questions are being raised over the probe by the Crime Branch (CB) of the local police, which can be susceptible to local pressures.
Given the sensitivity of the matter related to the macabre incident of rape and murder of the eight year old girl, not many people are prepared to take the risk of speaking the truth and ask genuine questions lest they be seen as siding with the rapists. This is outright opportunism borne by political timidity. Brutal rape and murder have taken place. Police have arrested the suspects. Suspects are not necessarily always the real culprits.
In the modern day social media driven world suspects are pronounced guilty even before the investigations and the trial. Particularly in the current situation where the macabre incident is merely used as a means towards a different end rather an end in itself, to seek justice for the victim, the probe should not only be fair, it should also be seen to be fair.
Local police everywhere across the country, whether in Jammu and Kashmir or any other state like Punjab or Haryana, are always vulnerable to the charges and allegations of having been influenced. At times they do get influenced also. Given the sensitivity of the matter, with people divided so badly and madly along the communal lines, it is important that concerns of all the people must be addressed.
What is the demand of the people protesting the government handling of the case and investigations? They only want the probe to be impartial. Even an accused and a suspect has a right to fair legal recourse and can always plead for changing the investigators and reviewing the investigation.
We have the recent example of Ryan School, Gurgaon murder case, where an innocent bus conductor was pronounced guilty by the police for the reasons best known to them, while he was no way involved. Such brutal was the force used by the police that the poor man admitted before the media to the crime he had never committed. Had it not been for the parents of the victim who suspected someone else and insisted on the CBI probe, the poor bus conductor would be languishing in the jail and waiting for the gallows. His crime was that he had taken the bleeding victim in his arms to the hospital that led to blood spots on his clothes. The local (Haryana) Police made it an alibi and evidence against him. He was not only accused of murder, but sodomy also. Thanks to the impartial probe by the CBI, the bus conductor is today free, but is yet to overcome the trauma he has suffered. He was demonised to the extent that two bar associations of Gurgaon and Sohana in Haryana, refused to defend him and it was a daring lawyer from somewhere else, who defended him and got him justice.
In all probability the Crime Branch investigation by the Jammu and Kashmir Police might be correct and accurate. But questions are being asked and suspicions raised, that the probe only reached to a “pre-meditated” conclusion. It will be in the interests of justice and fairy-play to address the concerns and suspicions of a large section of people across the state. An entire region has risen against, what it believes, an “unfair” probe. Dismissing their concerns merely by damning them to be defending and siding with the “rapists and murderers” is absolutely unfair and unacceptable.
People of Jammu need no certificate for tolerance and justice. They have always been tolerant and accommodating. They have never succumbed to any provocation. Ignoring and dismissing their genuine concerns will not be in anybody’s interest. Their concerns are well justified. Because the justice should not only be done, it should also be seen to have been done. The current investigations may have done the justice, but a large section of people believes that it has not been done. And those who have expressed doubts are well meaning and reasonable people who will be last to support any rapist or a murderer. Damning and demonising them just because they are demanding an impartial probe is actually unjust and unfair. Just because they are demanding a CBI probe does not mean they are supporting or siding with the rapists and the murderers.
P.S. Those hailing the investigations by the Jammu and Kashmir Police in this case, should also ask themselves how many times they have accepted their (JKP) findings in various other probes? Or is it just because the JKP reached to a conclusion they wanted, they hailed the outcome. A classic case of, “heads I win, tails you lose”.
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