We had, just the other day, made a comment in these columns on the encouragement to white-collar crime due to the tardy systems of probe and redress. We had taken as an example a crime involving no violence, where the victims were wealthy and connected and united, and where the systems of justice, police and courts, were on their side. Let’s go on to hold up a case reported last week, where a woman raped by a police inspector in 1984 had her claim for compensation from the state upheld by the high court. The married woman had been detained and raped by an inspector at a police station where she’d gone to register a request for help. The police was told without delay and the various tardy procedures followed, but she wouldn’t let go. The man was promoted in between to the rank of Deputy SP, but she persisted.
To cut a long story short, he was investigated, prosecuted and, in late 1996, sentenced to 11 years in jail. The state government paid its mandatory compensation of Rs one lakh to her; she said this wasn’t justice either, and returned to the court.
It took another 13 years, till last week, and she had to sell her house in the process of paying lawyers and so on, but she kept at it. And the HC has raised the compensation to Rs 8 lakh, with the judge saying she was ‘a role model’ for refusing to accept defeat. Quite so, and let’s leave for now the issue of whether Rs 8 lakh suffices to compensate her for all that she had to undergo. Can any of us feel satisfaction at the process? Why should a person seeking justice be reduced to penury and mortgaging the greater part of one’s life in this quest? The wonder is that the violence all around us which we deplore isn’t many times more; the average citizen swallows his or her fate, instead of lashing out. There are various categories which do decide to give it back to society – apart from Naxalites, many who take to crime have similar stories on their lives – but this is hardly a way forward. We need an alert and involved society, keeping pressure on reforms, accountability, for ombudsmen to keep probing, vigorous use of right to information laws, etc. We could start with pondering the burden put on this woman.