Samikhsya Bureau
As the debate over what are the quick deterrents the country can plan to halt the pace of incidents of rape in the country, doubts gain credence over the implementations and giving long ropes to perpetrators.
It is not about Nirbhaya of 2012 or Disha of 2019, but the tragic tale dates back to 2007, when a 19 year old B-Pharmacy student in Andhra Pradesh, Ayesha Meera, was found dead with multiple stab injuries on her body inside a ladies hostel in Guntur district. A nerve wrecking incidents that had shocked India in 2007.
The victim’s family had then claimed that, a relative of a minister and his friends were involved in the crime.
Somehow, the claim was given a short shrift and some innocents were arrested and sentenced also. Was that a miscarriage of justice, is a question that keeps haunting the psyche of people of Andhra Pradesh still.
Can Ayesha be first in ‘Disha’?
Now, after 12 years, almost an era, Ayesha’s soul has stirred in the grave. Her body has been exhumed by the national probe agency, the CBI, and an autopsy is being conducted at the graveyard !
Then after, perhaps, a fresh hunt will be launched to nab the real accused. Is it the beauty of democracy or a predicament of the law, is a question that the custodians of the democracy are to answer ?
But, for the present, Ayesha Meera’s soul must have perished in the gloom of complacency and the CBI can only invest some more days or months or years before the name of the victim disappears in the milieu of thousand other of her ilk who, either dead or alive, look up at the system to deliver the justice.
Why this new situation ?
The incident which had shocked undivided Andhra Pradesh on December 27, 2007 , had been buried under an extreme case of miscarriage of justice. When a man called Satyan babu, arrested in a mobile theft case, had ‘confessed’ to the killing of Ayesha. Babu was sentenced in September 10, 2010.
Now, Satyen babu has been freed from the prison in 2017, raising another question, if he had confessed to the crime or he had done so under pressure from the police, that may remain a mystery.
Andhra government had constituted Special Investigation Team (SIT) to conduct a fresh probe. The High Court was supervising the probe by SIT, which found that all records relating to the case were destroyed by the trial court.
Where does one go!
It is going to be a tough task for the CBI to unearth the destroyed evidence allegedly by the trial court.
Meanwhile, Ayesha’s mother Shamsad Begum appealed to the chief minister Jagan Reddy to make Ayesha’s case to be the first in the first in the Andhra Pradesh Disha Act.
The sense of the case reveal that, all acts relating to destruction of evidence were, allegedly, by the staff of the trial court and the CBI has to dig that out now.
If that is the system and pace that governs our jurisprudence, it is better that the Ayeshas or Nirbhayas or Dishas be allowed to rest in peace rather than being subjects of politicking.
