India: Do We Really Need a Judiciary Anymore?

Indian Judiciary (Source: NewsClick)

2020 has been a year rife with disasters and problems, one after the other. Even in the field of politics, entertainment, and with respect to the entire society as a whole, several incidents have just forced us to stop, look, and reconsider some of the things that we earlier used to take for granted. One of these things is the presence and the relevance of the judiciary in India in the current context. 

Several incidents over the past couple of months have seriously made me question that if the public and the media is playing the role of judge, jury, and executioner already, then why do we even need a judiciary anymore? In this article, we shall be discussing some of those events and incidents in some detail. 

From Thain Thain to an Upturned Car, Evolution is Real

Vikas Dubey Encounter (Source: India Today)

Perhaps the most crucial and most recent event deserves to be mentioned first: the Vikas Dubey encounter. Not having witnessed the incident and in the absence of a consensus among the various involved parties involved in the incident, I believe that it is premature to comment on whether the encounter was necessary or not. However, there are much deeper and larger issues at play here that we need to consider. 

Whether it is Gopal Kanda in Haryana, or Vikas Dubey in Kanpur, it is very difficult to imagine that someone could commit crimes on such a huge scale and get away with it without political support from the highest levels. The rising levels of encounters in the state of Uttar Pradesh ever since CM Ajay Singh Bisht (popularly known as Yogi Adityanath) came to power, should be a cause for concern. While encounters mean that criminals are effectively taken off the streets, it also means that no due process of the law is being followed, and this is a very dangerous sign for a country like India that believes in the rule of law. 

Also, speculation is that at least a part of those encounters were done in order to avoid exposure to the politicians who supported and permitted these gangsters and criminals. Which party is being protected through these encounters is up for debate, but if criminals aren’t being tried and sentenced in courts anyways, then why do we need them at all? 

Police Brutality, or Fake News?

Jayaraj and Fenix (Source: Arre)

Perhaps another famous incident from a few weeks ago, something you would definitely know about from the social media stories of “activists”. The case of alleged police brutality in the matters of Jayaraj and Fenix, which went viral after RJ Suchitra posted a video detailing what she said were the “details” of the incident. Social media went crazy over this, and a lot of people began demanding justice in the incident, and there was a huge backlash against the police in general. 

However, recent events and the investigation by the Tamil Nadu police have shown that RJ Suchitra may have lied in her video on purpose to spread sensationalism about the incident and gain media coverage. The exact press release reads, “Ms Suchitra’s descriptive narration of the incident is baseless and is not truly indicative of the real happenings. In this video she falsely exaggerated and sensationalised the chain of events and her allegations seems to be a figment of imagination and is not backed up by any proof.” However, long before the statements in the video could be verified, the public and the media had already passed their judgements, with some people even going as far as to call for a ban on the police force. 

When the people sitting on their couches at home are already so qualified that they know everything and can take all the decisions, then why do we even need a judiciary anymore? Or for that matter, even a police force is redundant. With social media usage on the rise due to low Internet costs and people having a lot of free time in the lockdown, all of us have really become experts on every matter, and we think we know everything about everything. 

Chief Justice on a Bike: Cool or Not?

Chief Justice Bobde on a bike (Source: India.com)

Recently, the Chief Justice of India went to Pune for a vacation. There, he was photographed sitting on a bike, and people on Twitter went into outrage mode for a couple of reasons. One, because apparently he was not wearing a mask in the photo. And two, because the bike belonged to the son of a BJP member. While the first issue can easily be debunked by saying that he took off the mask while getting the photo clicked, the second criticism was much more serious. Coming just a few weeks after former-CJI Ranjan Gogoi announced his candidature to the Rajya Sabha on a BJP ticket, it is understandable why people might be concerned about a Chief Justice becoming too friendly with politicians from any political party. 

However, the outrage and the heights that the issue reached was hugely disproportionate compared to the incident. People on Twitter started hurling abuses at the Chief Justice, with some people even going as far as to call him an “educated bhakt” and ask for his resignation. In such situations, why do we even need an established government, or even a Constitution? Clearly, a random XYZ individual with 12 followers on Twitter knows more about how to run the country than people who have been in the public service all their lives, and who were elected to power through popular public mandate? 

These are just 3 isolated incidents from a pool of hundreds of other similar occurrences that show how the Internet has made everyone a self-styled expert on everything. In such a situation, when we all can already decide everything about this country through Twitter and Instagram, then do we really need a judiciary anymore? 

We as Indians need to realize that there is a reason that institutions like the legislature, executive, and the judiciary exist, and it is crucial that we let them do their jobs properly. Having an opinion is one thing, but passing a decision based on limited facts is a different thing, and definitely something we as a country and as voters need to avoid doing. 

-NK