Chief Justice S.A. Bobde on Monday constituted a committee of two judges of the Supreme Court — Justices R.Subhash Reddy and M.R. Shah — for expediting all pending and future rape trials in the country.
The setting of the committee comes in the backdrop of a series of heinous crimes against women, including the rape and brutal murder of a 26-year-old Hyderabad veterinarian by four men last month. The suspects were killed in a police encounter.
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Amid a raging debate over the alleged encounter killing, Chief Justice Bobde had admitted last week that the country’s judicial system suffers from a few flaws that need urgent correction. “There is no doubt that the criminal justice system must reconsider its position and attitude towards laxity and the eventual time it takes to dispose of criminal matters,” he said.
Even so, the top judge maintained that extrajudicial killings cannot compensate for delays in the justice delivery system. “I don’t think justice can ever be or ought to be instant. And justice must never ever take the form of revenge. I believe justice loses its character of justice if it becomes revenge,” he said.
Talasani Srinivas Yadav, a minister in the K Chandrasekhar Rao government, said it was a message to rapists that “if you do something that’s so wrong and cruel, there will be an encounter”. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy also applauded the police for what he claimed was timely action. “Hats off to KCR and Telangana police officers, the way it happened,” he said.
(With Agency Inputs)