Sunday, February 13, 2011

Guilty Till Proved Innocent

Arushi Talwar’s case illustrates the abysmal level of public discourse in India.

The incompetence of almost all the institutions is the source. The wild proliferation of media, both TV and press, has positively worsened matters. The media picks up any insinuation and innuendo and has a tendency to make it a headline. The public laps it up.

In the Arushi murder case, the cops have done a thoroughly shoddy investigation, done u-turns on their conclusions, changed completely or selectively the reporting of key evidences. The trial court judgement flies in the face of common sense. The headlines in our media have picked up some incredible allegations and already pronounced the Talwars guilty. They have floated various theories around justifying the gory character of the Talwars.

In this environment, Open and Tehelka have done a yeoman service by publishing a different point of view. Their items are sensible, fact-based and coherent. It seems that anyone who studies the case closely believes that the Talwars are not guilty.

However, the bigger question is if the Talwars are not guility, who takes the responsibility for ruining their lives and in fact, they have suffered a punishment of unprecedented calumny and slander impossible for any human being to bear. Is it the CBI with its ineptness, the UP police with its crooked ways or the media with its only intent to sell? What punishment do they get?

No comments:

Individual liberty overrides group identity

  Group identity vs. individual Liberty has played an outsized role in human progress and by inference societies. After the early Greek flou...