A Criminologist's Diary-34

A Criminologist’s Diary-34

Account Criminology and Criminal Ju...

CONSENSUS CRIMES and JUSTICE

‘Consensus’ means in Dictionary the general agreement or concord and it appears to me that consensus works very deeply during the administration of justice. When I listen to the news in the media, I hear a lot about the CONSENSUS-i.e., the politician-police concord during the registration and investigation of criminal cases. The agreement is that the entire case will be investigated from its registration in a perfunctory manner or in a haphazard way so that the case will be discharged or dismissed or acquitted ultimately. The whole mountain will be in labour and what comes out will be a dead human flesh. It has been noted that even the Ministers of the ruling Governments, National level or State level politicians, district level political leaders interfere with the registration and investigation of criminal cases. They may even produce fake suspects for the police to arrest as the prime – accused in the cases registered.

Though we have the independence of judiciary and the prosecutors are free to conduct criminal cases in an independent way for administering justice to crime doers, the truth is that, as the allegation goes, they are approached or pressured to enter into CONSENSUS with politicians who offer them a lot of promises. The politician-prosecutor tie-up is extended to the police for arriving at a general CONSENSUS or AGREEMENT to torpedo the administration of justice and delivery.

CONSENSUS with judges too becomes a live topic of media discussions and press conferences. Most unfortunately, the allegation against some of the judges is that in some of the cases, they are offered with corruption money, human comforts, luxuries, positions and new assignments etc., to destroy or defeat the sublime purpose of administering justice. Thus to cut a long story short, a desperate situation, it is strongly suspected, has now emerged that the fence has started eating the crops – i.e., what has been intended to protect or guard the crops eats up the crops! In other words, there is no one to guard the guardians! Resultantly, people lose their trust in police machinery of the States. They demand always- sometimes going the Courts of Law-C.B.I.’s inquiry/investigation in almost all cases to the extent that in a recent case before the High Court of Judicature, the C.B.I. has informed that they have no officials to spare for taking up the criminal investigation of fresh cases. The State Governments in large measure resort to the investigation by the C.B.I. and it indicates that they too have started losing the trust in their own police machinery. The State Governments in some cases appoint special public prosecutors to conduct the criminal cases or they remove one and appoint another Public Prosecutor to conduct the cases means again the same thing. It shows the distrust of the Governments in their own lawyers. Many politicians including some ministers make public utterances, media interviews and speeches signifying their distrust in judges and the quality of their judgements. All these point to a hard and unpalatable fact that all of them suspect a sort of consensus among the various sub-systems and the politicians., The motivating factors can be anything from monetary gains to positions of importance in life. It is a fact to be reckoned with that many who act upon the CONSENSUS are respected, honoured and placed at high pedestals after the purpose for which the CONSENSUS is arrived at. The growing demand of the people today is that the CONSENSUS among the sub-systems or between the sub-systems and politicians must be treated as crimes called CONSENSUS CRIMES punishable under the penal laws of the Country.