Don't subvert the legal system

This article appeared in The Hoot and can be read here.

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When you read that Bollywood celebrities have extended moral support to Sanjay Dutt in his hour of despair, you understand their camaraderie, dismiss it, if you are cynical as another celebrity endorsement and move on to the next headline.

When Markandey Katju appeals to the Governor of Maharashtra to exercise a power which he does not possess, you wonder: ‘If Katju had to write to someone who does not have the power to pardon, why did he choose Governor? Why not to the jail superintendent of Arthur Road or Pune prison that when Sanjay Dutt surrenders in the next four weeks as per the Supreme Court order, he should not lock him up?

When you learn the absurd reasons Katju advances for seeking pardon for Dutt, you realize that perhaps when he was busy mastering mathematics so that he could rap the Allahabad lecturer, he had forgotten law.

When Manish Tiwari and Ashwani Kumar support Katju’s appeal to Governor to grant pardon to Dutt, it is apparent that their political compulsions have blunted their legal intellect.

In other words you tend to dismiss the clamor of the aforesaid persons to secure clemency for Sanjay Dutt as biased or inconsequential.

 

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But when news channels use this chorus for mercy to Dutt to seek similar benefit for another convict in the Bombay blast case or an eminent lawyer cherry picks a paragraph in the Supreme Court judgement convicting Sanjay Dutt and advances a myopic legal argument for the release of Sanjay Dutt, you realize that a dangerous precedent is being created furtively to disregard the judgement of the highest court of the country.

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