Do be do be do: Five years gone by

The 133-page verdict by the Delhi High Court in the recent Delhi Riots bail case is a tight, intergalactic slap on the portly faces of the well-fed, well-housed accused in jail and their apologists outside for their attempts to unleash Gandhian thoughts and Constitutional ethos onto a society enjoying a peaceful, undisturbed life at the national capital.

Credit goes to the valorous Bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Shalinder Kaur for standing its ground and not getting swayed by frivolous arguments that the accused did not make calls for violence, and to instead accept with undue diligence the Delhi Police argument that protest pe charcha can be detrimental to the sovereignty and integrity of the country.

In doing so, the nationalistic Bench’s order also echoed as a stern warning to the intellectually smug and emotionally plucky people of the nation to remain within the bounds of philistinism and mediocrity, and to put their duties above their basic rights.

Aside from the carefully crafted verdict, which discards the alibi claimed by two of the accused - Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam - to hold them as “key conspirators in planning and designing the scheme of events”, the judgment also cuts its own path by forging robust jurisprudence in bail matters, much to the chagrin of the Court’s anti-national detractors.

For instance, in response to the argument on the delay in trial - as a consequence of which the accused have been behind bars for five years now as undertrial prisoners - the Court cites the chargesheet running into more than 3,000 pages, with an additional 30,000 pages of electronic evidence, all of which would unequivocally translate to the fact that “the pace of the trial will progress naturally”.

Thus, in declaring that “a hurried trial would also be detrimental to the rights of both the accused and the State”, the Court bestowed maternal care on the accused, thereby revealing itself to be the epitome of empathy and magnanimity.

The reasoning, which might very well come to be known as Delhi High Court’s “hurried trial jurisprudence" on bail, could find its way into foreign jurisdictions as well, given the depth of thought and the concern it affords undertrial prisoners by shielding them from the stony-hearted world outside the prison walls. That is to say nothing of the polluted air and flooded roads of the national capital region.

The ruling could well surpass the fame of rulings like Australian Underwriting Company vs. State of Wakanda, unless some witness for the prosecution plays spoilsport to rob the judges of their much deserved accolades.

At this juncture, words fail me, forcing me to borrow from the wisdom of the famous scholar par excellence Scoob, who said, and I quote:

“Do be do be do”.