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Please sir, it's been eight years

Some weeks ago, a letter found its way to me via multiple changes of address. In it was a curt demand to pay up for two parking violations in the town of Wilmington, Delaware, USA. If I didn't pay, said the letter, there would be a warrant issued for my arrest.

I quaked. But with a little digging, I found proof to back up what I knew: on those two days, I was not even in the USA, let alone in Wilmington. There had been some strange mix up with the records of a car I once sold to someone who lived in Wilmington. So I wrote to the people who sent me the letter, explaining all this.

But since I dispatched my note, I have been thinking I should have tried an entirely different argument. You see, the violations happened in January and March, 1992. I should have written saying: please don't punish me, it's been over eight years since those parking tickets were issued.

Perhaps those Wilmington authorities might have had themselves a loud laugh before sending an armed posse out to get me. But here in India, I am sure there would have been no laughing. It would have been a most effective argument. It gets used all the time. Take just three examples.

Just two months ago, a man called Bal Thackeray showed up in a Mumbai court. The charge against him? That he had broken Indian law in writing certain editorials in December 1992 and January 1993. Now you might have expected this man, asked to answer for his own writings, to defend himself by saying that he had told the truth and was willing to stand by it. Or that those writings of his hadn't broken the law. Or that he believed freedom of speech was greater than any law. Or maybe even that he didn't actually write those editorials.

But when the man arrived in court, we saw none of those lines of defence. Instead, he repeated one thing over and over again: that the editorials were written such a long time ago and so he should be allowed to go home. Magistrate B P Kamble, presiding over the judicial proceedings that day, found this a persuasive argument. Declaring that the case was "time-barred", he threw it out.

Note: at no point was there any examination of whether laws were indeed broken. No, it sufficed that nearly eight years had passed since the man wrote his editorials. The passage of time was his only argument against his prosecution.

In April 1996, a man called H K L Bhagat showed up in a Delhi court. The charge against him? A woman called Satnami Bai filed a case over the November 1984 murder of her husband. She remembers a large crowd that attacked her house and burned her husband alive during the carnage that month that blighted Delhi and defiles India even today. Her husband, of course, was Sikh. Bhagat, she said, was the leader of that mob; he had urged the scum on as they looted and murdered at will.

Now you might have expected this man Bhagat, asked to answer this charge, to defend himself by saying Satnami Bai was mistaken: that he was not part of the mob, let alone its leader. Or that if he was part of the mob, he had no part in the murder and even tried to stop it from happening. Or even that no such murder had taken place.

But when the man arrived in court, we saw none of those lines of defence. Instead, he repeated one thing over and over again. It had been nearly 12 years since the events in question had taken place, he told the judge, and he was now an old man. These matters from so many years ago, he said, should not be "raked up" all over again. Having made this submission, he then complained of severe chest pains and asked to be admitted to a nearby ICU. He was. Four more years have passed, and the case has progressed no further.

Note again: at no point in that hearing was there any examination of any actual evidence, or testimony, or Bhagat's possible guilt. No, it sufficed that nearly 12 years had passed since the murder. The passage of time was his only argument against his prosecution.

With appeals to this passage of time from two such prominent men, it can hardly be a surprise to find it is easily used elsewhere: as in a report submitted to the Supreme Court in early September. "No action was proposed against R D Tyagi," one sentence in the report says, "for the reason that he had since retired on October 30, 1997, and service rules say if the event in question has taken place more than four years before, [then] action is precluded."

And what was this R D Tyagi accused of? In 1992-93, he was a joint commissioner of police in Bombay. The Srikrishna Commission that inquired into the riots in Bombay in 1992-93 examined an incident in which nine people were shot dead by the police in a place called Suleman Bakery. "This is one incident where the police appeared to be utterly trigger-happy," wrote Justice Srikrishna in his report, "and used force utterly disproportionate ... The responsibility for this incident must squarely fall on Joint CP, R D Tyagi, who was overall in charge of the operation."

Elsewhere in his report, he reiterates this point: that Tyagi and his men "are guilty of excessive and unnecessary firing resulting in the death of nine Muslims in the Suleman Bakery incident (C.R. No 46 of 1993)." Based on these findings, Srikrishna "strongly recommends that government take strict action" against Tyagi and two junior police colleagues for the Suleman Bakery deaths.

Nearly eight years after the shootings, and close to three years after Justice Srikrishna submitted his findings, the government of Maharashtra produces a report explaining what it will do about this and other actions Srikrishna recommended. Because he has retired, and because more than four years have passed since the "event in question", it proposes to let Tyagi off.

(And just by the way, the same report also observes that one more reason the government will not punish Tyagi is that "the [shooting] was done in the discharge of his duty." Unfortunately for Tyagi's two junior colleagues, neither the years nor the "discharge of duty" applies to them. Both are facing departmental inquiries into their conduct at Suleman Bakery. Such are the perks of being mere juniors in the police force. No doubt those two are feeling thrilled with their predicament and their superior officer's escape. No doubt this is how we keep up that police morale we hear so much about).

So what do you think? Is there a theme here? Here's the one I see. When a powerful Indian does something that breaks one or more Indian laws, his first and only endeavour is to make sure several years go by before he is called to account for his crime. Believe me, this is not a difficult endeavour. For if you are a powerful Indian, you can get other powerful Indians to order commissions of inquiry into those events you were accused in.

Such inquiries take a long time, and in any case you can further slow their progress in innumerable innovative ways. You can get those other powerful Indians to repeat a peculiar little lie: that since an inquiry is in progress, no action can be taken as the "matter is sub-judice." (It isn't, because an inquiry commission is explicitly not a court of law). Besides, you and they also know well the truth about commissions of inquiry, the truth that makes them so easily ordered: their findings are not binding on governments.

And when the inquiries are done and the reports complete and they merely reiterate the guilt everybody knew you were covered with in the first place, there is one little fact that has been established beyond any doubt. This fact: many years have passed. So you can chant that mantra and even find people to chant it with you, as Bhagat and Thackeray fans do very loudly indeed: please don't punish me, it's been so many years.

(And just by the way, I should point out that with Thackeray and Bhagat, it wasn't an inquiry that brought them before the law. Even though separate inquiries have pointed out their misdeeds, individual cases actually took them to court. Nevertheless, the "so many years have passed" argument applied.)

All in all, you know you can wholly escape even the hint of punishment by Indian law for your Indian crimes. By the simple tactic of ensuring that time goes by.

A few questions, then: what does this tactic mean for law and order in India? Why, for example, are we so concerned about terrorism? Why not just wait for a few years to pass and then exonerate the terrorists on that very basis? And why on earth should this tactic not apply to eight-year-old parking tickets in Wilmington, Delaware?

Dilip D'Souza