Life goes on...

It happens only in India…

This morning I read in the newspaper about a young boy who had been convicted of stealing Rs 200…and his punishment? A bail of Rs 10,000…

Reading it forced me to wonder on the enormity of the crime committed. The usual penalty of such an offence is an imprisonment of up to three months, a year of which has already passed since his arrest. He was one of the many lesser mortals who could a squeeze a year out of three months. I wouldn’t go into the debate on whether he was guilty or not, but what bothers me is the situation. How could someone be expected to pay up 10,000 bucks if he was accused of stealing 200 bucks? Is it a mockery of the judicial system or is it a very not-so-subtle way of making a small crime big? After all size does matter…

In a country a certain chief of an organization gets away with stealing crores of rupees in fancy scams, ministers swindle millions of rupees and each one makes it a personal battle, making each scam bigger than the previous one. Even if they are sent behind bars due to some stroke of good fortune, they are spotted having high tea with the warden squandering the hard earned money of the tax payers.

The boy’s father passed away without being able to meet him since his imprisonment. There are no takers for him in jail now but a certain terrorist accused of manslaughter has been living in luxury in one of our jails for more than a couple of years now and millions of the taxpayers’ money is spent on his security and well being.

Such dichotomy really leaves me speechless and the more I think about it, the more mindboggling it becomes. We boast of being a peace loving nation which believes in giving an equal and fair trial to all but the definition of equality and justice differs with every case. Such a variety is not available anywhere and certainly not desired by anyone. A boy loses a year of his life , his father and above all his innocence for stealing a mere Rs 200 whereas a wannabe actress not only walks scot-free for being a partner in a gruesome murder but also bags a movie based on her life and ‘struggle’.

The struggle of us mortals seeing all this happen never ceases...so does the cliché ‘life goes on’.