CITYZEN. Powerless in the face of false cases

The quality of life in a city is sometimes evaluated in terms of the everyday life of its citizens. Such an approach is believed to provide a more comprehensive view of life as it goes beyond individual indicators like health, education or the availability of physical infrastructure. Yet everyday life may not be a comprehensive enough indicator for Indian cities. The cost of events that we do not face everyday in our cities can be so high as to completely alter the meaning of urban living.

In cities like Bengaluru where the public health system is close to being non-functional, a single illness in the family of a daily-wage worker can leave a trail of deep debt. And the possibilities of family-destroying unusual events are not confined to health. There are a number of domains where life in our cities leaves many urban citizens vulnerable. And encounters with the law are among the most underestimated risks of life in Indian cities.

Take the case of the recent murder of a young boy in an elite Delhi school. The local police was quick to arrest a bus driver, no doubt seeking to give the impression of losing no time in enforcing justice. But if the CBI is to be believed, more careful analysis of the evidence pointed to an older schoolboy being the killer. This is no doubt an unusual event that will hopefully not occur again. But the arrest of the driver raises an important question about urban life: Just how serious is the problem of false cases in our cities?

The answer may not be very comforting as there are a number of factors that allow and even encourage the generation of false cases. The problem begins with the widespread acknowledgement that the law does not work very well. Since justice delayed is justice denied, there is an understandable urban clamour for quicker conviction and punishment. In the absence of a judicial system that can respond quickly enough a number of shortcuts look appealing. The one that has gained the greatest attention in recent years is the media trial. Television channels are quick to identify a suspect, often based on evidence that is chosen more because of the eyeballs it attracts rather than any rigorous scrutiny.

The problem is not one of the media alone. Suspects can be arrested and held for long periods before their case is decided by the courts. This leads to the very real possibility of long years of incarceration for persons who will eventually be proven to be innocent. The prospect of innocents spending time in jail can be used, by those who can influence the system, to threaten the vulnerable. And since this influence can be used at multiple levels in the system, there is a wide range of people with influence who can, and evidently do, use the instrument of false cases.

What makes the problem difficult to address is that it is accompanied by the more predictable and opposite process of the guilty gaming the system to go scot free. This generates a demand not just for harsher laws and quicker punishment but also to act before sufficient evidence has been collected. This results in pressure on the law enforcement machinery to act on the suggestions of those who are powerful enough to influence the system, even if that were to eventually result in a false case. The low conviction rate in the Indian legal system is generally assumed to be the result of the guilty going free. But it is also possible that this low rate is a reflection of the large number of false cases being filed.

The response to this difficult challenge of reducing false cases, even as the guilty are punished, is a matter for jurists to address. But what is of relevance here is what it does to life in our cities. False cases create an entirely new division between those who have influence and those who do not. It is tempting to see this division as only reinforcing existing inequalities based on economic divisions. It is also convenient to point fingers at the usual villains, especially politicians. There is no reason to believe that the misuse of influence does not extend to groups such as the bureaucracy or even family networks. And it is becoming increasingly evident that this influence is being used to threaten the vulnerable, irrespective of whether that vulnerability arises from their gender, class, lack of awareness of the legal system, or any other urban liability. This additional serious threat is something our cities could well do without.

The writer is a professor at the School of Social Science, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru