Author: Editorial
Publication: The Times of India
Date: August 3, 2007
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/The_Other_Blasts_Case/articleshow/2251752.cms
Introduction: Judicial delays in Coimbatore
nurse politics of victimhood
Despite a special court convicting 153 people
in the 1998 Coimbatore blasts case, it is Abdul Nazar Madani's acquittal that
has attracted attention. Madani, president of the Keralabased People's Democratic
Party, was cleared of all charges, but only after spending nine years in jail
as an undertrial. He was denied bail during these years despite many pleas.
Unfortunately, Madani's case is not an exception.
Undertrials constitute 75 per cent of the prison population in India. The
blasts in Coimbatore, a cosmopolitan industrial hub in Tamil Nadu, were no
less vicious than the 1993 terror strikes in Mumbai, though, fortunately,
the toll and destruction of property were less. Victims in Coimbatore, like
in Mumbai, have complained bitterly of the long wait for justice to be delivered.
Even though the scale of planning and execution in the Coimbatore blasts was
less in comparison to the Mumbai blasts, the investigating agencies took three
years to file the chargesheet and the trial went on for more than six years.
The Coimbatore case is another reminder that our policing and judicial apparatus
needs urgent repair.
The Madani case also exposed a double standard
of our political class. Senior politicians in Kerala campaigned for his release.
In a clear interference in the working of a separate branch of government
- the judiciary - the Kerala assembly passed a resolution in 2006 seeking
Madani's immediate release. Legislators in Kerala, or elsewhere, have hardly
shown similar concern for the thousands of undertrials packed in overcrowded
jails across India. Perhaps legislators have come to believe their own bombast
and see themselves belonging to an exceptional category.
The court appears to have ignored the pressure.
Madani finally got his name cleared but his supporters are now bent on making
a hero of this once rabble-rousing leader. The years as an undertrial prisoner
have bestowed on him the halo of a person terribly wronged. Politicians of
all hues have come together to fete him and claim a share of his political
base. Madani has been speaking loudly about a shift in his political stance.
A strong element of religious extremism has coloured his political rhetoric
and practice in the past, but now he swears by a moderate and inclusive democratic
agenda. Let us see how he performs in political life. Who knows, the long
judicial delay may have produced one happy outcome after all.
