India’s judiciary seeks to burnish its reputation with some belated guilty verdicts

The guilty verdicts have elicited a torrent of favorable media commentary, with the press congratulating itself for stoking and maintaining public interest in these cases and lauding the courts for having the integrity and courage to convict the rich and powerful.

Kushwant Singh, one of the country’s best known media commentators, hailed the recent convictions for “beginning . . . the process of restoration of faith in our judicial system.”

“Convictions of Shibu Soren, Navjot Sidhu, Santosh Singh, Manu Sharma, Sharda Jain, Sanjay Dutt and others showed that no matter how important or celebrated a person, he or she is not above the law,” Singh wrote. “We have much to thank Justice R.S. Sodhi for. Credit is also due to our media; to TV channels for reporting the public outrage at the miscarriage of justice and the press for its sustained pressure to bring criminals to book. I hope the process will continue.”

That such comments can be made attests to how widespread is the public perception that the justice system is subject to financial and political manipulation and shot through with class bias.

They also indicate that India’s elite—which has increasingly used the courts to suppress opposition to its neo-liberal socio-economic reform program and to strengthen proprietary and managerial rights—fears that the ability of some its own to literally get away with murder is undermining public faith in the judiciary and thereby endangering bourgeois rule.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/indi-f03.shtml