The courts, complain the law enforcement agencies, are not putting enough captured terrorists behind bars. Citizens of the terror-stricken nation sit up and take notice. Could the (distinctly) rightist mood of the courts be behind the dismally low rate of conviction?
Maybe, but not really. Because the cases that are not terror related provide us a natural control group. The rate of convictions is rather low here as well. The same story in all soft states that are in the developing world.
The low conviction rate is, indeed, worrisome, admitted the Chief Justice at a seminar the other day. But it is not just the courts’ fault. Flawed investigations was also to be blamed. As was the prosecution department and yes, the bench.
In particular, he talked about the lack of training. From this stems the greater problem. Consider: medical education being so highly regulated in the country, every time you go to a doctor, even if you hit upon one of the weaker links of the profession, chances are that the said doctor will know at least the semblance of his craft. That, unfortunately, is not the case in the legal profession. And since the judiciary is culled from this community, at least certain tiers within the judicial system have consistently shown a shockingly low level of knowledge of the law.
The prosecution branch is also recruited from the same community with the same lax standards.
As far as the investigation side is concerned, the extremely limited fiscal resources of the police department and the extremely large precincts of the police stations make thorough investigation extremely unlikely even if the concerned officers did, in fact, have the requisite training.
But the Chief Justice chose the correct route to solving the problem. Better this long and tough approach than the simpler approach that was being recently demanded by the military: a change in the evidence act. A slippery slope, that. Better lesser convictions that recklessly low standards to ensure them.
Counterintuitively, then, it is an investment in the police and the justice system that would avoid the descent into a police state. In an attempt to dismantle the networks of terror, the utmost care must be exercised to ensure there isn’t any highhandedness by the state itself.