The rising concern of virtue signaling in the Indian courtrooms

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An assailant, who has committed a heinous crime of raping and murdering a 4-year-old girl child is standing within the balustrade. He is pretty convinced of his fate that is awaiting him. Naturally, death is inevitable for him and is going to be a reality very soon. And why not! The most unpardonable, utterly disgusting and wicked sin that he has committed deserves nothing less than death.

The reading of the final judgement begins. The judge starts off calling the act barbaric and monstrous. The judgement also reads “A tiny, bud-like girl was smothered by the appellant before she could blossom in this world. The monstrous act of the appellant suffocated the victim to such an extent that she had no option but to leave this world.”

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But the milords gave the most unprecedented twist to this case. The three judge bench declares that the crime committed cannot be termed as the rarest of the rare to award a death sentence.

** Audience and the victim’s family is flabbergasted** W.H.A.T?

Wait, it doesn’t end there. In what appears to be a Bollywood mimicked woke gathering where the judge who penned the judgement quotes Oscar Wilde “Every Saint has a past and every Sinner has a future” and reduces the death sentence to 20 years of imprisonment.

I’m sure the above scene puts even the most intriguing courtroom comedy scenes like Legally Blonde or even namma CSP to shame! But, this is no Netflix series. This happened in real, three days ago in the Supreme court of India. I frankly do not have enough imagination to recall the drama that would have unfolded in this court hearing! The bench refers to the principles of restorative justice and believes that the victim deserves an opportunity to become a socially useful person and repair the damages caused. On this grounds, milords reduce the death sentence awarded to a child rapist to 20 years’ imprisonment. Yeah! True story, this one!

I am not even going to the intricate details of what Oscar Wilde meant in his above quote. You can read it here. But of late, repeatedly, the Supreme court of India, through its judgement, has proven that it is more inclined on virtue signaling than sending a strong message to the offenders. In this case, I truly fail to understand the need to uphold the sentiments intended to demonstrate a rapist’s good character in a courtroom! It is truly shameful that a three judge bench, of which one is a woman, shows concern for a child rapist. And in the name of justice, all that victim’s family received was cliché! Oh dear lord; I cannot imagine the victim family’s plight.

Of late, such folly by milords of India has become a mainstream concern for the justice seekers of our country. There have been more and more judgements in which judges have their own ideas of what constitutes as justice as opposed to what is right circumstantially (Sabarimala case), giving weightage to their own views in deciding the judgements (Freeing Rajiv Gandhi’s assassins), unnecessary levels of virtue signaling (Sallu Bhai case), citing examples of the legal luminaries of west instead of our own (Chief Justice DY Chandrachud). I can go on and on!

Whenever someone spoke ill of judiciary in my informal debates with friends and family, I have always asked them not to throw rotten tomatoes at the judiciary. I always argued that when justice fails, it is the dawn of new bad beginnings. I am not sure If I myself have this opinion anymore. I am no legal expert, so I discussed this case with a lawyer in the family who practices in the supreme court. This is what he opined “there was a time when our judges were capable of identifying virtue signaling attempts by lawyers. They were capable of seeing through the façade and recognize the hidden motivations of such virtue signaling. Now, our judges need lessons on why it is not a good idea to base judgements in heinous crimes on restorative justice”. He said that the judges of yesteryears based judgements on mature jurisprudence than the contemporary judges

With such repeated woke liberal behaviors in the courtroom, justice is going to be far-fetched. It concerns me even more when I see that executive and legislature are seeing improvements (Yes, I have my reasons to say so), but judiciary is slowly becoming implausible. I sincerely pray to god that such irrational behaviors by milords will write its own death sentence, for the greater good! Let dharma prevail.