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| Nine Years After The BMW | | There is an awakening among people who have lost their loved ones. A desire to fight | | NILAM KATARA
MY FIRST reaction to the conviction of Sanjeev Nanda in the BMW hit-and-run case was a question: Why did it take so long? In my fight for justice for my son Nitish, I never once lost hope. But the other side always makes a very conscious effort to delay the case. For a salaried person like me, financially, it’s been an absolutely huge effort to fund the case. All other major expenses have been put aside. You start neglecting your work, your career suffers. You suffer physically, your health deteriorates. Simply by getting adjournment after adjournment, the criminals break you down. Even the interest and memory of witnesses fades with time. When Bharti Yadav came, it was four-and-a-half years late! Witnesses forget. Delay is an incredible trauma for the victim. For the criminal, it is the best weapon. I think the system must come down heavily on lawyers who seek adjournments for frivolous reasons.
There are all kinds of power struggles in fighting these cases. The kind of lawyer someone with money can afford, and the kind an ordinary person can afford are very different. Compare the office of the Chief Public Prosecutor, Delhi to the cabin of any other successful lawyer. The Public Prosecutor in my case doesn’t have assistants to help him research and work on the case. The pressure on the Public Prosecutor is so high that he can’t keep up the fight.
It is very difficult to get a conviction in cases with high-profile powerful accused. But the battle doesn’t end there. I heard the wife of one of the constables killed under the BMW saying on television, she doesn’t believe that Sanjeev Nanda will spend 10 years in jail. She’s not wrong. Why, even for murder, after a trial of 14 years, the accused can ask for remission. Even in the BMW case, I feel that a life sentence would not be for life. It never is, in this country. The victims will possibly spend longer running around courts than the convicted person will in prison.
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t draw a parallel between the BMW case and my case. Firstly, the BMW case wasn’t the fight of the victim. Secondly, the profile of Sanjeev Nanda is very different from the accused I was up against. We were fighting against a person with a long criminal background. The father is a B-Class history-sheeter. My problem was more of the politician-criminal mix. It worries me that Parliament or an assembly becomes the best shelter for a criminal. People get even more scared to stand their ground against them. It is this criminalisation of politics and the politicisation of criminals that I was fighting against.
Even with all this working against me, at no point did I feel I should give up. Because I was fighting for my son, and for a much bigger cause. So many people told me that nothing would come of it. But I always believed in the fairness of the judiciary. If justice wasn’t done at one level, I could always take it to a higher level. When I walk up and down Patiala House, I still see so many people sitting there, without a clue about what’s hit them. I’m supposedly educated, but I remember the time when I had to go through stacks of legal paper trying to understand those heavy words. I couldn’t find the answers, but at least I knew enough to ask questions. There is a difference when cases like Jessica Lall, Priyadarshini Mattoo, and Nitish Katara get highlighted. People who’ve lost someone call me up and say, “We’ve lost someone 15 years ago, but we were too traumatised to open our mouths. But now we want to take it up.” It is this awakening that I feel happy about. It also works as a deterrent for criminals. School children are picking up guns and shooting each other. When they see a 28-year-old kill somebody and not get punished, obviously the 16-yearold also feels he’s immune. There is all-pervasive crime, and there is also a brazen feeling that you can commit a crime and get on with your life.
People might say people like me get justice because the media is on my side. I don’t think the judges in this country decide on cases based on what is written in the newspapers. If that was the case, my case would’ve been finished in six months. It did not. It took six years. You have a DP Yadav who can carry Zeenat Aman in a plane to help him to canvas. Yet, I think the common man has suffered for too long in the system and needs someone to champion his cause. If that someone is the media, then so be it. It may be too little, but even that is overdue. |
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