A culture of “instant justice,” political slugfests, and polls

The Bombay High Court has considered the Maharashtra Police’s version of the custodial death of Akshay Shinde, the accused of sexually assaulting two minor girls in Badlapur. Earlier this week, Shinde was shot dead in a suspected Thane police encounter.

His father then petitioned the Bombay High Court to initiate a probe by a special investigation team into what he said was a fake encounter. Even as Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde defended the police action as a measure of self-defense after the defendant allegedly snatched a pistol from the police officer as he tried to escape. The state government also told the HC that the crime branch of the state police has already investigated the matter and two FIRs have been registered.

Before adjourning the matter to October 3, the Bombay HC appeared to be unconvinced by the timeline or chain of events that the police gave as the reason for the shooting of Shinde. The court was of the view that there was a lack of credibility as Shinde was physically weak and untrained in handling a pistol.

At the same time, the controversy surrounding Shinde’s death has already turned into a political slugfest, even more so as the state assembly elections are less than two months away.

The state’s main opposition parties – the Congress, the NCP and the Shiv Sena (UT) – have criticized the government’s claims and . The ruling alliance partners – the BJP and the CM Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena – stood by the allegations of the encounter and urged them to avoid politicizing the case and reminded them of their demand to hang the accused as news broke the gruesome crime became known for the first time.

Aside from the usual political noise that comes with it, some questions go beyond the immediacy of this case. If one does not trust the encounter theory and also rules out any other conspiracy, what could prompt the state government to stage an encounter? What, in their political assessment of the public psyche, might prompt governments to direct state police to produce spectacles of instant justice over and above the due process of law? More importantly, why do political parties think it makes sense to join in the chorus of retributive justice when terrible crimes like these are committed? Does this public impulse, which can drive both parties in power and opposition parties, put pressure on law enforcement agencies such as the police to pursue “quick results”?

Almost five years ago, similar questions had met with divided – almost polarized – answers when a shootout broke out in Hyderabad in 2019 between four men accused of raping and murdering a veterinarian. The killings were met with praise for the police’s actions – even – and expressions of rule of law and doubts about the police version of the shooting.

First, the political incentive to supposedly enable such extrajudicial killings can be seen as a public exposure of a society that harbors a retributive impulse in its conception of justice. More than people realize, the desire for proportional and immediate justice has been at the heart of the lynch mobs, which have been much talked about in India of late, but whose nature and motivations have not been analyzed. What is lost in the controversial social media diatribes about alleged communal lynchings is that they represent only one aspect of the crisis of flouting the law to ensure immediate justice. Their anger could be directed against acts as diverse as actual or suspected theft, child kidnapping, evening teasing, cattle smuggling, and witch watching.

It is also visible in the popular amusements of our time. The way mainstream Indian cinema, a microcosm of the country’s popular culture, treats moviegoers to the vicarious thrill of instant justice has been evident for generations. The hierarchy of torture reserved for various categories of villains – often at the hands of messianic heroes, including police officers who resort to loud methods to settle scores – is in some ways a blend of the proportional and proximate dimensions of justice , which serve one’s retribution wish list.

Back in 2019, there was a strong tendency in the reaction to the killing of the Hyderabad rape and murder accused to see the celebratory reaction to the killing of the four men by the Telangana police as a loss of faith in institutional effectiveness of the criminal justice system in the country. In other words, it is seen as a cathartic jolt of circumventing judicial review – a process that many find to be an uncertain and very long road to justice.

This is a worrying sign for the view of any form of modern citizenship – the premises of which must take into account AV Dicey’s idea of ​​the rule of law in times of institutional dysfunction as well as in times of robust functioning. The same goes for its conceptual addition, due process.

At the same time, such cases become difficult for people who, while skeptical of the police theory, have little material to refute the police’s claims about the encounter. Calling for a fair investigation remains their best chance of gathering facts about what actually happened. The lack of trust in the state police, although widespread, cannot be the only reason for a rebuttal. Furthermore, one must remember that the low credibility of the police version also goes hand in hand with a general ignorance of the powers, limits and functioning of the police. As in the Hyderabad case, in the present case, if challenged by human rights activists, the Mahrashtra Police would most likely cite the first of the two situations where Justice MN Venkatachaliah in his note sent to all the states and Union Territories as the Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission in 1997 allowed the Police to use “deadly force.”

The first situation is described as follows: “Under the criminal justice system prevailing in India, it would not be a criminal offense if death is caused in the exercise of the right of private defense.” By invoking retaliation, the Maharshtra Police would defend its case. However, any further investigation would pay attention to how serious the provocation was, if any.

Despite these similarities, one heartening difference from the 2019 case is that there was no major celebratory reaction to the killing of Akshay Shinde at the encounter, although outrage over the crime was high. This may have been possible because the opposition parties found better political arguments to challenge the alleged encounter as a cover-up conspiracy.

Without relevant facts and research, one is unable to rely on either theory – encounter or conspiratorial cover-up. But the fact that skepticism was not lost in the retributive consensus for immediate justice could be a small but not insignificant victory for the cause of due process.

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