Justice confused

Justice seems to be a pretty confusing concept to me these days.

I keep hearing raves and rants about how our judicial system is flawed and how money and influence can get a criminal out of jail, and how cruelly manipulative the system is. Perhaps the flip side of this is the mob on the streets. Who is the mob? It is you, me, it is the people of our country, eventually. But what is the mob, is it plain hooliganism, rowdyism, vandalism or is it just swift and decisive justice?

The mob doesn't care what the crime is, an offender could be a pickpocket caught in the act, it could be someone misbehaving with women, it could be an errant driver involved in an accident, anything. The most common incidents of mob fury are road accident related ones. I was witness to two such incidents not too long ago. Avik had offered me a lift home from office in his car, and on the way we saw commotion on the street. Apparently a pedestrian had been knocked down by a lorry and had falled unconcious to the ground. It was pretty hard to guess whether it was the pedestrian's fault for arbitrarily strolling on to the main road or whether it was irresponsible driving from the lorry driver.

Avik seemed to be the only person in the area with any sense, he immediately asked the onlookers to get the injured man in his car and drove him to hospital. I got off the car to make room, and waited for him to come back to pick me up. While I was waiting, the crowd identified the driver who had hung around to see what had happened to the victim and started beating him up without mercy. I guess there were about 50 people beating up that one man. The anger of these men is not measured at all. Each has a varying intensity of beating; one of them may have fought with his family, one may have been fed up of dealing with the bureaucracy of state government officers, one may have a frustrating unsatisfying job, but all of them are angry for some reason or the other. And everything combined is taken out on the offender.

On another day, I was riding to office on my motorbike and noticed a gathering ahead on the way. A man driving a Tata Sumo had ventured on to the wrong side of the road and hit another biker side on. The biker had fallen and hurt himself a little bit, but thankfully not seriously. The sumo driver however, was extremely wary of stepping out of the car, knowing that if he did so, he would definitely be beaten up by an angry mob. In fact, a mob had gathered around the car threateningly, and the man inside had joined his hands and was pleading with the crowd to let him go.

Ideally, persons who cause accidents through negligient driving ought to be arrested and their licenses cancelled. But almost all such offenders run. And in most cases, the reason for running is not fear of the law, it is fear of the mob. I have read numerous reports of road accidents in the newspapers which mention that a truck or lorry had run over a pedestrian, the driver had managed to escape only to surrender later at a police station.

The example is just that of road accident culprits. However, not all criminals can be held in Indian police stations. One phone call from an influential person is all it takes for even a rape convict to walk free. So what is the right thing? It would probably take ages for a court to sentence a criminal for a crime; is it people's way of instant justice then, to thrash the offender at the scene of crime itself? If so, is it not a slap on the face of our country's judicial system, and does it not literally scream of the lack of faith that the people have in the law?

I'm sure it does, in some cases of mob fury I hear of on television, I see instances where maybe even the police are either fed up of the painfully slow procedures of the law and feel that the mob can give better justice, or are way too apathetic to make sure that the law is upheld.

I wonder what is right. Maybe it is another huge paradox we will never be able to solve.