The recent incident of violence between a faction of lawyers practicing at the Madras High Court and the Tamil Nadu local police is one more incident that exposes the appalling state of rule of law in India. On 19 February, the local police, in order to curb a strike called by the lawyers, closed the gates of the High Court compound, and attacked the protesting lawyers.
A fight ensued, resulting in the lawyers and the police pelting stones at each other. Then, the police officers marched into the court compound, destroyed the vehicles parked inside the compound and later charged into the court halls and the lawyers’ chambers. They assaulted lawyers, litigants, onlookers, court-staff and even a high court judge. The behaviour of the law enforcement officers resembled that of street ruffians, or probably worse.
Since the incident involved the lawyers and the judges, it caught the attention of the national media. Even the Supreme Court of India intervened. The Bar Council of India issued a statement condemning the attack. The Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, in a statement issued yesterday, said that he has decided to go on a fast until the lawyers and the police resolve their grievances.
The fact is, the lawyers and the police will settle their grievances even without a ‘Mahatma Gandhi style’ threat by the Chief Minister. It will be resolved whether the Supreme Court intervenes or not. Both the lawyers and the police officers know that they require each other. Experiences have taught them that hurting each other will be equally detrimental to the lawyers and the police officers.
In the meanwhile, some lawyers approached the Supreme Court seeking an intervention. The underlying reason for the lawyers approaching the Supreme Court is to indirectly ensure that certain criminal elements among them are not charge-sheeted for the crimes they have committed. It is also a form of dragooning by the lawyers, against the police and the state administration, to get away with their crimes.
A realistic view of the incidents that transcribed inside the High Court compound on 19 February has little to justify the lawyers. The incident suggests even less in justification for the police. The incident but highlights the state of affairs in the country, and will be remembered in the country’s history, unfortunately, as a point of reference to the downfall of rule of law in India.
Police ransacking houses, assaulting innocent persons and destroying property is no news in India. Yet, the Chennai incident found its place in all the print and electronic media in the country, since it involved the Indian middle class and a group of professionals.
Just two weeks before, a similar incident happened in the middle of the night in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh state. Police officers from the Cantonment Police Station in Varanasi, on 29 January, attacked 12 families staying by the side of a public road. 50 police officers who were involved in the incident were under the influence of alcohol and were apparently acting on behalf of a person involved in land grabbing in the city.
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) reported this incident, AHRC-UAC-010-2009, through its Urgent Appeals Programme. No media in India thought that this incident is serious enough to occupy their time. Neither did the Supreme Court, or for that matter the District Magistrate at the minimum, cared for those who were injured, assaulted and sexually molested by the police in the incident. In fact, they need not intervene, since those who lost their belongings and the mothers who were molested by drunken police officers in front of their children, were from the Dharkar community, living by the side of the public road and are untouchables in the caste dominated India. Unfortunately, for the Dharkar families none among them was stone pelting lawyers or robe-clad judges of the republic.
Similar incidents of brutal police assault happen almost every month in India. Almost every day, the state police in Chhattisgarh state, raid peasant houses in rural villages in that state. Whoever protests faces false charges in non-bailable offenses, and is detained indefinitely as Naxalite cadres. In the Northeastern states like Manipur, Assam and Mizoram hundreds of families have similar stories to tell and their number is increasing each day. The question is why is the Chennai incident different?
From a layman’s point of view, are lawyers and judges different from the ordinary persons? Do the courts in India have a higher sanctity than a poor peasant’s house? Does a lawyer suffer more pain in an assault in comparison to what a peasant woman might endure, when she is sexually molested in front of her children? Is an injury caused to a judge more serious than the grief of the parents who lost their children in police actions? The justice system in India must address these simple, but fundamental questions, or else, its silence will be considered as an approval of selective justice.
No one in India has ever heard a Minister skipping a meal, in protest, when police officers under the Minister’s command murdered, assaulted, tortured and raped persons. Instead, the experience is, defying justifications offered by the Minister or the government for the blatant violation of law. The Chennai incident is proof to the fact that what is practiced against the ordinary citizen will one day be used against the not-so-ordinary persons. Unfortunately, this time, the police chose the lawyers and the judges.
It is high time that the police and other law enforcement agencies in India are brought under the accountability of law. There would be hardly anyone in India who will oppose this, other than the law enforcement officers and the politicians who play puppetry with them. The question is, how long are the Indians destined to watch this poor performance?
