The Brave Pedestrian

Blindly obeying any policeman takes us one step closer towards a "Police State", and one step farther from a healthy democracy. Therefore, our FUNDAMENTAL DUTY ("to develop a scientific temper, humanism, and spirit of enquiry and reform") requires us to overcome our blind fear of the uniform and fear of authority, and understand the limits of a policeman's powers. We need to understand what the law requires us to do, or not to do. It is true that the law requires us to cooperate with a policeman in the performance of his duty. However, the law also requires us to UNDERSTAND THE LAW itself, and what it empowers the policeman to do. If the policeman is acting in excess of his statutory powers, the law requires us to resist. A citizen's blind compliance with authority enables to State to encroach on the rights and privileges of all citizens. Regardless of his rank, if a cop phones us and asks us to meet him at the police station, there is ABSOLUTELY NO ...

Here's something the media never reports: "Anaadi courts" are the instrumentality by which the State deprives tens of thousands of Indian citizens of their Fundamental Right to Life & Liberty. Without due process. For trivial offences like crossing the railway tracks, ticketless travelling and "loitering suspiciously" (combined with inability to furnish bail-bond or engage a lawyer), people are arrested and held in judicial custody for days, weeks or even months in judicial custody, without even being chargesheeted. This is happening daily, without interruption. Hello... Are the Chief Justices listening? Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share  

Unlike the US justice system which has a "witness PROTECTION program", Indian judiciary has a "witness ELIMINATION program". Our courts systematically defeat the good intentions of witnesses, failing which they eliminate the witnesses themselves. They create conditions where witnesses are rewarded for turning hostile, and severely punished for being honest. At great personal risk and inconvenience, witnesses appear before the court in murder trials or trials involving offense s committed by rich and influential people (such as Salman Khan's hit-and-run case). But rather than recording the witnesses' statement at the earliest, judges mechanically give tareekh pe tareekh for many months and years... until the witnesses' stop being cooperative, or their memory fades, or they are intimidated and choose to keep quiet, or they sink into debt and financial distress, and stop coming to court, or they accept money to change their story, or they are silen...

We Indians have the self-confidence to analyze the performance of our elected leaders, and openly criticize them for their failures. But when the subject of Judiciary arises, most of us fall silent. Judicial reforms will not happen until we end this slavish silence. Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

Here's something the media never reports: "Anaadi courts" are the instrumentality by which the State deprives tens of thousands of Indian citizens of their Fundamental Right to Life & Liberty. Without due process. This is happening daily, without interruption. Hello... Are the Chief Justices listening? Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share