High profile, rich and influential people - a Bollywood star, a powerful politician, and a business tycoon were allowed to walk free by appeal courts, despite being found guilty by lower courts.
Court cases are time consuming when more than 30 millions cases are pending. The snail-speed justice ends up benefiting the rich and influential people as witness with money power and social pressure have often been used to articulate the cases. It took 13 years for a court in Mumbai to convict a famous actor of culpable homicide and sentence him to five years in prison, but an appeal court to suspend the sentence and grant him to bail.
After 18 years, a court, last September found former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Jaya Jaylalitha guilty of amassing unaccounted for wealth, and sentenced her to four years, but and appeal court cleared her corruption charges.
Ramalinga Raju was bail out after his lawyers argued that he had already spent substantial part of his term in jail.
Way back in 1992, my entire young family was involved in road accident while on trip to India. Their stationary vehicle at Railway level crossing was hit by a state run express bus near Bardoli. The injured family was taken to a local hospital for treatment of their fractured bones before returning to the UK. The driver of the bus ran off and could not be traced. This filed case took 15 years to award a paltry compensation of Rs11000 (£120) with interest for their injuries and abandoned further travel.
Despite PM Modiji's anti-corruption slogan "hun khato nathi ane khava deto nathi" the widely spread cancerous bribery and corruption still do exist at all levels in each and every sectors in general public. "Donation" is a dirty word that has been used to substitute this for school admissions, and even when right candidates apply for a job or subsequently seeking for promotion.
Lallubhai Patel
Gloucester
