Police needs to be made accountable, and freed from grip of politics -MR Shamshad

-The Indian Express

Whenever the criminal justice process fails, there is an outcry for new laws. We have enough laws. What we lack is the honest implementation of existing laws.

The Hathras case has once again put the spotlight on our criminal justice process. The facts of the crime and subsequent support from powerful interests in favour of the accused are very similar to the 2018 Kathua rape case, where two sitting ministers addressed a rally, largely of upper castes, in support of the accused. In Hathras, too, we saw upper-caste mobilisation in favour of the accused. The Kathua case was of a tribal girl, Hathras of a Dalit girl. The 2012 Delhi rape and murder case was gruesome, but no one sought to justify the accused. In fact, it resulted in an overhaul of rape-related law.

Initial facts in the Hathras rape show that it has a lot to do with hate and caste-related issues. The National Crime Records Bureau does not compile crimes within categories of hate crimes, lynching, khap-related issues, etc. A report by Amnesty International stated that “it is essential for the country’s penal laws to first recognise the bias behind the commission of such crimes and document the occurrence of such incidents — both of which remain conspicuously absent currently”.

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