Justice is all about being fair and reasonable. Anyone and everyone can vouch for this in the recent judgement on Hindi film actor, Sanjay Dutt, who was sentenced to a jail term for unlawful possession of terror weapons. The actor has admitted to the guilt and has said that he does not wish to seek pardon.

However, a small but vocal section of the elite -- film celebrities and some esteemed citizens of this country -- has been choking with emotion while seeking pardon for the 53-year old actor. Loads of print space and air time are being used to generate sympathy for his ‘innocence’ and ‘impressionable’ age at the time of the offence (he was 33 years old then), and that he has wife and two small children to look after, so on and so forth. All this while, the actor has been out of jail, shooting and partying. Yet, support for him keeps pouring.

Pan the camera to another corner of the country – Manesar, an industrial belt in Haryana, which saw violence on the premises of the Maruti Suzuki factory in July last year, leading to the death of an official. In one stroke, 147 workers were put behind bars and 2,500 permanent and contract workers were sacked. Requests for bail and parole have not been granted.

Apart from filing umpteen affidavits in vain, the workers’ families, most of them workers and peasants, have appealed to almost all administrative officials and elected representatives, including the Haryana Chief Minister and the Prime Minister. But none has heard them out. Not even the media.

Now, in an appeal issued from jail on March 28 to the Government, “for the last time”, the workers have said they were being “forced into a situation of committing suicide or killing others….” -- words that do not bode well for a fair and reasonable justice system.

Among the various demands of these workers is one for an impartial enquiry into the incident of 18th July. Is that asking for too much? Or, have all these workers already been pronounced guilty? The jury is still out!