Editorial: Delayed, but not denied

CHENNAI: Justice Nagarathna and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan must of course be praised for upholding justice for Bilkis Bano and for saving the blushes of the Supreme Court in these dark times for our democracy. Their judgement quashing the remission granted to 11 convicts for the rape of the woman, and the murder of 14 members of her family in 2002 comes very much against the run of play in our judiciary, and indeed against the grain of our deeply misogynist polity. Such has been the desperate state of our rights and liberties that this last-gasp judgement is being held up as proof that the judiciary remains standing as our last bastion of hope.

But such has been the erosion of our faith in our highest institutions that the most one can say about such a claim is that the jury is out on it. So many embarrassments have been swallowed and so much ground conceded in recent judgements—the Article 370 case, the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi title verdict, the Adani probe case, to name just a few—that it would take an indefatigable optimist to see anything more than a wisp of hope arising from this verdict.

Women particularly could be excused for being sceptical that this fully restores their faith in the law. Beginning with the occurrence of the incident itself back in 2002, the hurdles encountered by the victim have been daunting and the courage she had to summon up at every turn exceptional. The trial had to be moved to another state because the courts and police of Gujarat could not be trusted to do justice even in this most heinous of crimes.

Then, the convicts were freed on Independence Day in 2022, and, as if that were not macabre enough, publicly received and felicitated by BJP members with admiring references to their ‘Brahman sanskriti’. That the governments of Gujarat and India looked on indulgently over all this underlines the odds stacked against Bilkis Bano when she approached the courts to have the remission quashed. Many exceptional things assisted her in her effort, many exceptional things that would not be available to others.

For one thing, she had a supportive husband who stood by her through all the adversity. Next, the best lawyers in the country argued her case, and she received the support of highly motivated activists for whom this was a cause celebre. Add to that Bilkis Bano’s own exceptional courage and the exceptional wisdom of two judges and you get a sense of what it takes for a women to get justice in a case like this.

How many women would be able to stay the course like Bilkis Bano and how many would remain unintimidated by the Male State we have today? The verdict delivered by Justices Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan gives insights into how much might this Male State employs to deny justice to women like Bilkis Bano: An entire state government corrupts the process to secure freedom for this pack of convicted rapists; the Union home ministry bends over to facilitate this complicity; and a battery of legal officers of the state and Centre join forces to thwart the victim’s effort to get justice. How many women would be heard through all this? How many judges would hear them in today’s India? Perhaps two?