Amitabh Srivastava, Senior Journalist
There was a time post Nirbhaya in 2013 that all political leaders of Delhi led by then chief minister Shiela Dikshit protested when Delhi was called the ‘rape capital’ by the world press.
But something has changed drastically since then.
I quote four headlines since 2019 till 2021 where newspapers have the same screaming headlines and there is not even a whimper.
Not from police, not from BJP leaders and of course Kejriwal is too happy.
Delhi is India’s crime capital, latest govt data shows- Outlook India , October 2019
Delhi is India’s crime capital, latest govt data show- Tribune, 2019
Delhi ranks first in crimes against women- The Hindu 2020
And in 2021, the Hindustan times screamed:
The exasperation of the Supreme Court was due to the fact that litigation had been going on for more than an year about those arrested for the riots in Delhi in 2020, most of whom had to be released for no evidence by the Delhi High Court.
This after then Delhi police commissioner SN Shrivastava had boasting at a press conference in February 2021 that “extensive use of technologies like facial recognition,drone mapping, retrieving deleted data from electronic devices,CCTV footage,GPS, DNA and finger prints had helped in arresting the accused in northeast riots, leading to the arrest of 231 accused.”
And now the whole country is in a rage since November 8,2022 when a Supreme Court Bench comprising then Chief Justice UU Lalit, Justice Bela M Trivedi and S Ravindra Bhat released three men convicted of a brutal rape and murder of 19 year old Kiran Negi in Najafgarh in February 2012.
This time the embarrassment for the Home Ministry headed by Amit Shah is worse because the three accused had been convicted and sentenced to death by a Delhi court in February 2014 and subsequently by the Delhi High Court in August 2014.
This rape was even more brutal than than of Nirbhaya which occurred on a cold December 16 the same year.
Knowing that there would be huge repercussions of their judgment the Bench was unanimous that shoddy investigation by the Delhi Police, which is the best equipped in the country probability only second to Tamil Nadu, left the Court with no option but to acquit the three convicts.
As per the court order, of the 49 witnesses examined by the court no witnesses had identified the accused.
It also stated that neither the trial court nor the high court examined the underlying basis of the findings in the DNA reports.
Realising the impact this decision was going to send the highest court candidly admitted, it may be true that if the accused involved in the heinous crime go unpunished or are acquitted a kind of agony and frustration may be caused to society in general abs to the family of the victim in particular.
However,”No conviction should be based merely on the apprehension of indictment or condemnation over the decision rendered” the bench said,
It said that every case must be decided by the courts strictly on merit and in accordance with law without being influenced by any kind of outside moral pressure or otherwise.
This clear indictment of the Delhi Police means all the talk of filing a revision petition in the Supreme Court by the Chief Minister of Uttarakhand or the Lt Governor of Delhi is barking up the wrong tree.
Unless the Delhi Police, allegedly over-worked by protecting the VIPs of the capital, revises its style and reworks on the case nothing is going to happen.
Instead of talking to the Law Minister the CM Pushkar Dhami should have met the Home Minister Amit Shah to set a few heads rolling in Delhi.
