The First Indictment

The reason for this legal invention is clear: it is intended to compensate, albeit inadequately, for the protection offered to guilty ministers by the appalling slowness of the judicial machinery. Investigations take months and years, and are liable at any time to be derailed by interference from pliable senior officials or overactive ministers. The interference of Joginder Singh, chief of CBI, in the Bihar fodder case, or of the law minister in the matter of bail for Mr Narasimha Rao, illustrates the hazards to the smooth progress of criminal investigations. Even where there is no such blatant sabotage of justice by top officials and ministers, delays in investigations can arise from the retirement or transfer of officials, and the quality of the case finally presented may suffer from poor investigation. The cases would come up before the court after years, to which must be added the delays of litigation the adjournments, changes in benches, and other predictable hazards.

 

There will be widespread public support for this exemplary imposition. Ministerial corruption is the most important single factor that has brought our democracy into disrepute; it rouses everyones ire. The judiciary is seen to be the only institution that is capable of confronting this spectre and willing to take it on. Public opinion is equally supportive of the imprisonment of the politicians involved in riots and scams.

However, public support should not be taken as an index of appropriateness of this incidental punishment. There is no connection between the politicians and bureaucrats misdeeds and the punishment immediately meted out to them in the form of fines or custody during investigation; and neither is a substitute for correcting the slowness of the judicial process. In this respect, the Supreme Court has done much to streamline its procedures and expedite its work. But all other courts, from the munsif magistrates court to the high court, are still slow and ponderous; justice in India is generally denied, because it is almost always delayed. Judges tend to regard their task to be the meting out of justice; but speeding up justice is equally their task. It may require managerial expertise foreign to the courts, but it can be inducted from outside, and it should. The Supreme Court needs to engage itself in the modernisation of the judicial system down to the lowest court.