Withdrawal of criminal cases

Committees headed by deputy commissioners reviewed as many as 4,200 cases acquitting 52,000 in the first phase. But at that stage, murder, rape, arson, arms and bombing-related cases were kept out of the review exercise. Subsequently, however, handpicked names would be delisted from the last-named category, so that in the end, the figure of the released persons reached a whopping 53,408.

A committee comprising joint secretary (police), a representative from the law ministry and law advisor to the home ministry made a separate review of 150 cases involving grave offences like murder, rape, arson, arms possession and use, and bombing. In the end, 1408 persons accused of having committed such crimes have also been exonerated.

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A government reserves the right to withdraw a case, but the acceptability of its action will be dependent on how it exercised that right. If the cases were politically motivated frame-ups, they had better been left to the courts to decide and acquit the accused of the charges. The judiciary's opinion had not been obtained on the subject to let go of the trials. Solely by a blanket executive action a point of law has been set aside. Such wholesale release of accused or under-trial prisoners by a political decision seems as questionable as the alleged politically motivated cases themselves will be.

Rule of law is the biggest casualty of this blanket annulment of criminal cases. The signal that goes out to those who may have committed the crimes they were charged with (whatever their number) is that they could always count on a change of government to get off the hook. So, it is always the criminals ruling the roost regardless of which government came to power. Besides, there is the chameleon character to the criminals that guarantees them the proverbial cat's nine lives. One law enforcement official has put it very aptly in a question form: what is left to the crime-control role of the police if the cases instituted during one government are withdrawn by another government? The criminals cease to take the police seriously while whatever is left to the latter's credibility is eroded in the eye of the public. The police would have reasons there to feel frustrated. Another way of looking at it would be: how vulnerable the police remain to be utilised by each government to serve its political purposes. Under the circumstances, police professionalism is hard to come by.

On the public level, it is highly important to note that those who were directly affected by the offences would feel they have been denied of justice because the real culprits may have slipped through the fingers. Furthermore, each time the law and order situation takes a vicious turn, the finger would get pointed to hardened among the accused criminals having been set free under 'political' considerations. Since the political parties are often blamed for taking criminals under their wings should not they strive to remove such negative impression about themselves by totally refraining from recommending names to be dropped from the criminal cases?

All we are saying is: if there was nothing in the cases, the courts would have pronounced it in their verdict as they have done in the past. If on the contrary, there was anything in them they would have said that, too. In the process, criminals would have been sifted from the rest with the society gaining immensely.