The document criticizes India's police and judicial systems for being politicized and failing to properly investigate cases or deliver timely justice. It argues that police investigations are often tailored to serve political interests rather than find the truth. As a result, innocent people are jailed for long periods without cause. The document calls for holding accountable those in power who misuse investigations and prosecutions for political gain. It also advocates reforming the systems through "transplantation and reconstructive surgery" to restore public faith in the government.

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The Sell-out by India’s Top Police Officers: Tailoring
Investigation for their Personal Benefit
Shantanu Basu
The Malegaon blast judge discharged close to a dozen accused that remained
incarcerated for over a decade in most cases. Evidently, police investigation and
the prosecutors’ presentation to the court were dictated by their political
masters. Even an agency like NIA was not above board.
What is worse is a former Home Minister rewrote an entire affidavit submitted
to a court, all ostensibly to pin the tail on the BJP’s election donkey. Remember
this was the same HM that caused his PM to be hauled before a court in the
spectrum sale case?
The manner in which the role of ‘saffron’ terror was planned and compliantly
investigated and presented to courts merit the highest degree of rigorous
punishment for the perpetrators, including then incumbent PM, CM, State and
Union Home Ministers and their Secretaries and DG/IGs of the investigating
forces. It is these worthies that need to be put on notice first and foremost with
exemplary punishment to enforce their accountability to the people.
Each investigative agency, state and central has become a tool to sub serve
political interests and speaks volumes for the supreme supineness, malleability
and singular lack of integrity of the apex official stewards of these forces.
Should the heads of these agencies also not be severely prosecuted in like
manner?
In no civilized democracy do courts issue arrest warrants, police/judicial
custody, stay and adjournment orders at the drop of a hat that too in less than
180 days’ average of court annual working time. Likewise, they take decades to
decide whether there is any merit in the prosecution’s case. All the while,
officers in the CBI/EOW net, criminals, chicken-stealers, wife-beaters, drug
addicts, dowry-seekers et al spend long years incarcerated or in suspense or till
death do them apart.
Equally, the world’s largest democracy’s police owe citizens a minimum
modicum of decency, humanism, responsible behavior and investigation in a
larger framework of accountability to the public.
Even when court proceedings conclude in favor of an accused, there is no
remorse or condemnation of the prosecution’s case in the order, least of all any
order to punish investigative officers for their shoddy or politically motivated
investigation or impose any realistic compensation for the now exonerated

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accused. Nor is there any hassle in admitting appeals by higher court registries
and judges thereafter, more so when celebrities, politicians and their lawyers are
involved.
What is even more surprising is that appeals assume the garb of a re-trial rather
than being a procedural review issue that ought to be the case, adding another
decade of incarceration for the accused. In effect, not just the accused but also
the lower court judge indirectly gets tried while his further professional
progression depends on the outcome of the appeals process.
It is a great tribute to the Malegaon judge that he exonerated the accused.
Likewise, I hold several members of the lower judiciary, notably in Delhi, that
have delivered outstanding verdicts in the last several years in the highest
esteem. Yet very few made it to the higher judiciary on promotion, presumably
because their orders were anti-establishment.
India’s judicial and police systems are in severe crises. And this is when these
two are critical pillars of Indian democracy. Anti-tetanus shots are hardly the
remedy, rather transplantation and reconstructive surgery is strongly advised if
people’s faith in their governments is to be preserved.