Law is a dick: Curious case of a driverless car from India long before Google that killed a man in 2002!

It was year 2002 and that was a fateful night, for the poor homeless chaps sleeping on pavements and also to a superstar who was about to drove his SUV over them. That SUV whose driver has changed in police records from drunken Salman Khan to not-drunken Salman Khan to no Salman Khan now. But the poor who died and four others who were injured have remained same, until now. A lower court pronounced the Khan guilty while High Court with same pieces of evidence lower court referred to has acquitted him of all eight charges. So to say evidence decides the justice will be a grave mistake. Court said, he can’t be convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence yet the same courts have ran whole trial and subsequent judgement based on the same circumstantial evidence in Aarushi Talwar and Hemraj’s double murder. Court observed how public opinion can’t be a case for court verdicts yet in the case of Aarushi a whole theatrics of a case was built around public shaming of Talwars! Fans of the superstar, citizens of this very country were bursting crackers outside the Khan’s Galaxy apartments and across the nation to go into specifics calling it Justice after 13 long years, they were talking about how humane the superstar is and why he didn’t marry all these years — yes, they said it all! But is justice really delivered? What is justice after all — is it acquittal of a superstar of all charges or finding and prosecuting the killer of that fateful night? You decide.

There was a movie by name Jolly LLB which revolved around similar story line of a rich guy ramming his SUV onto people sleeping on footpath and then a theatre of court room drama where from driver to vehicle, everything changes as case proceeds. Even people in flesh go dead in police records and dead rise from the grave! That was a movie, this was real. Just tell me, would it have taken 13 long years to convict the culprit of a homicide where all the four (earlier they were three) who were inside SUV, alive after the accident if it didn’t involve a rich superstar? When all who were inside of the car were alive, shouldn’t the case have been solved in couple of months if not days? A Mumbai cop who was inside that SUV on whose FIR (First Investigation Report) this whole case was built is long dead. His story is again another tale of apathy from his own men and the very system he served. He must honestly be awarded for sticking to his guns until his last breath.

 To remind you, this was no ordinary case. With top lawyers who decided on their toes (remember how top lawyer Harish Salve ensured Salman not goes behind bars even for a day when lower court passed the sentence?), film fraternity closing on to their own and how the superstar built an empire of goodwill with his ‘Being Human’ foundation just after the case was registered in this case!

 I won’t bore you with specifics of case and how same evidence was interpreted differently in lower and higher courts nor am I calling Salman Khan the guilty. But there was someone behind wheels that night, someone responsible for the death and injury of the poor. Will those voiceless poor whom law is mere a fancy weapon of the rich get justice? Or they don’t have place in our rule books? Decide for yourself. And remember, it was evidence that pronounced him guilty in lower court and the same evidence proved his innocence in higher court; so it wasn’t the winning of law of the land but the prowess of one side of the lawyers over the others! Call it what you want but it certainly wasn’t justice, it certainly won’t be one until we find and punish the man behind wheels and all those who took our system on a ride all these 13 years, from people inside the car to police who did a faulty investigation of so clear a case; you had all the people safe and sound from SUV to investigate and a cop who stood his ground!

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