Shakti Mills verdict was a spark of speedy justice

Since we are so used to corruption and unconscionable delays in our justice delivery system, an occasional spark of swift relief to a victim of a horrendous crime makes us go overboard. I am referring to the conviction of the four accused in Mumbai's Shakti Mills gang rape. The incident, where the victim was a photojournalist, occurred on August 22, 2013, and the police filed a charge sheet within four weeks.

Kudos to them! The case was tried by a fast track court which took less than seven months to complete its proceedings. The obvious sense of satisfaction over the Shakti Mills verdict is, however, only partially justified. The amazingly quick conclusion of judicial proceedings owes a lot to the huge media publicity that the case had received. Even assuming that a gang rape is serious and deserves quick punishment of the guilty, can the system ensure such speed in the future? I do not think so because courts are so overloaded with cases that justice will continue to be painfully slow.The police and judicial sloth apart, the lawyer community contributes a great deal to the mess. Definitely, we can't expect the defence lawyer to speed up the process. He normally takes his own sweet time, using every trick to pick holes in the prosecution story. The public prosecutor and the police can, however, do a lot to minimise delays. Both of them now waste a lot of time citing and examining in court far too many witnesses. This concern for quantity rather than quality often dominates their mind. The other area of delay is the enormous time taken by forensic laboratories to deliver reports to the police.

This factor is not peculiar to India. I personally know how much the FBI in the US and the UK police are also frustrated by the case backlog at labs. UK has reduced delays to an extent by recognizing many private labs that have been authorized — after great scrutiny of their professional competence and integrity — to handle police investigation samples. Notwithstanding some criticism of this practice on the grounds that these private labs are not as accountable as their government counterparts for quality reporting, this is a practice worthy of emulation by Indian investigative agencies. A small beginning has been made by giving some work to bodies such as Truth Labs set up by Dr KPC Gandhi, a dedicated former head of Andhra Pradesh Forensic Laboratory. This is, however, too token an endeavour to impact the pace of investigation. In my view, governments should generously fund individual forensic experts to set up their own labs after retirement and accord recognition to them, no doubt after a rigorous process of certification. This would greatly boost the number of qualified labs and help cut down delays in the criminal justice system.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) should take the initiative in the matter. However, the outcome of this innovation will be felt only after a decade. Much more important than speed, rape investigations in India cry for professionalism at every stage. Financial muscle distorts outcomes, both during investigation and trial. This is especially true where the victim is from the lower stratum of society, and also lives in a remote village. The general feeling is that rape cases are least reported. Two factors account for this. First, the sense of shame and social stigma attached to rape victims. Secondly, in a very high percentage of cases, the offender is either a close relative (uncle or cousin) or friend who has free but unsupervised access to the victim. There is, therefore, a reluctance to go to the police. A settlement at home is the eventual ritual, if at all the unfortunate happening becomes known to the guardians. The situation will remain murky unless a social revolution takes place and the community works to obliterate the stigma attached to the victim, exhibiting a resolve to bring to book those who criminally assault women. Are we asking for too much?

The writer is a former CBI Director