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Three years after the dastardly gang rape and murder of Nirbhaya the fast track court set a brutal rapist free. A loophole in the law gave him the benefit of being a juvenile. This is in contradiction to the amended Juvenile Justice Act, opines AG Brace.
On December 16, 2012, the juvenile sadistic rapist and murderer of 23-year old Nirbhaya, (a paramedic) on a moving Delhi transport bus walked a free man, possibly looking out for another victim to satiate his lasciviousness. He is 20 years old now.
Three years since the dastardly gang rape and murder, over 135 hearings and 110 witnesses examined till date, the snail’s pace of so called ‘fast track courts’ has been a façade to expedite justice to victims of rape. It makes one skeptical of the efficacy of and our legal system.
The corpulent loss to the exchequer is overtly justified by the so-called experts on legal system and the Human Rights activists, who debate the applicability of the Juvenile Justice Act retrospectively. This contortion of the law to engender a loophole for a reprieve of the juvenile rapist by citing his democratic rights is sheer absurdity and a mockery of that very democracy as the amended Juvenile Justice Act categorically states, “Punishment shall be commensurate with the nature of crime and the manner in which it was committed” (italic mine).
The bestial voyeurism and filthy expletives used by the youngest of the six rapists – then almost 18 years of age (he is six months younger when he committed the rape) – as he brutalised his victim with an iron rod, after repeatedly raping her, even though she begged for mercy. It was narrated by Nirbhaya to her mother before she died a few days later. It can, by no stretch of imagination, be attributed to a juvenile.
After taking turns to rape the girl the youngest of the six rapists still not satiated, repeatedly raped her then stuck a wheel jack rod into her vagina. The force used was such that pieces of her organs got wrenched out. The juvenile then ripped out her intestines with his bare hands. They laughed and hollered in glee as she screamed in pain.
If the newly Amended Juvenile Justice Act is not strictly adhered to and the rapists retried, the Law would have failed not just Nirbhaya, but every woman in this country.
Punishment needlessly remains contentious and reaching a consensus is a far cry. Rehabilitation in a reformatory is just eyewash, to circumvent punishment. Counseling would be like throwing water on a duck’s back and might not change his psyche.
The Union minister Maneka Gandhi had said she was not sure justice has been served in one of the most gruesome cases of rape and advocated a close watch be kept on the culprit, now free. She would be taking up the issue of surveillance with the authorities. When asked to elaborate on the anomaly of justice, Maneka replied “Let us not confuse justice with the law. The law said that he could only go to a children’s reformatory…. That’s the anomaly we are trying to correct. He has served his sentence and according to the law he is set free and there is nothing we can do about it until or unless he commits another crime. So that is all we can do”.
Pix from Net
