Salman Khan, Adnan Patrawala's killers and the criminals Maharashtra deserves
August, 2007.
Sixteen-year-old Adnan Patrawala met five of his friends for a casual evening out at a mall in suburban Mumbai. He did not know that his friends had planned to abduct him, demand a ransom of Rs 2 crore from his businessman father, and would eventually strangle him to death. He did not know that despite his murder, his friends would get away with his blood, the judiciary in support. He went to meet them, unaware, and was then found dumped in bushes on the city’s outskirts. He had trusted his friends, like his family trusted the law lords, the police after his body was found. But their faith too, like his, was smothered.
Five years after Adnan’s death, the court acquitted his alleged killers of all charges. The prosecution did not have enough evidence to prove the case, and the men were allowed to walk free. While covering the story for a city daily, I spoke to Adnan’s father after the verdict. I could see that the defeated man had resigned to hope. “There is a court above all courts. There is a judge above all judges. And when he passes his judgment, the truth will prevail. All those responsible for my child’s murder will be brought to justice,” the boy’s father said to me. The teenager’s aunt, meanwhile, could not contain her anger. “The accused have been acquitted? They have been set free? Is everyone saying that no one killed Adnan? If no one killed Adnan, you tell me, how did he die?” she questioned. And now, eight years after the tragedy, her question still remains unanswered.
But it’s not just Adnan’s kin who will be left pondering the answer for the rest of their lives. The family of 38-year-old Noorullah Khan, the man who was killed in the hit-and-run accident of 2002 where actor Salman Khan recently saw acquittal, will be left bridging the same puzzle. Their men’s deaths will always remain unaccounted for; their men’s killers will, in all likelihood, always remain unpunished, and even worse, pardoned. Offenders, I’d better use the word "alleged" before offenders, walking away with their heads held high is not a phenomenon new to Maharashtra, nor is it shocking. According to figures from the National Crime Records Bureau of India, the state has an abysmally low conviction rate. Even as the national average touched 45 per cent in 2014, Maharashtra saw only 19 per cent of its alleged offenders being punished for their crimes. Mumbai, meanwhile, had a conviction rate of 23 per cent, according to data from NGO Praja Foundation. The data further revealed that in 91 per cent of the acquitted cases, the reason for pardon was the prosecution’s failure to prove the charges. This failure of the prosecution prevailed in Adnan’s case, in Salman’s case, and in innumerable others. Justice, meanwhile, was lost to repetitive history.
Law gurus opine that the situation in Mumbai and its mother state is such owing to the lackadaisical approach of the investigating agencies, the dominance of local mafia, and the long pendency of litigations. The legal process, says YP Singh, former IPS officer and now a high court lawyer, is left unsupervised, with only the lower-rung officers coordinating with the public prosecutors during a case’s trial.
“Senior officers do not look at the trial. They’re too busy with law and order, with their VIP duties, with their meetings and public relations activities with politicians, indulging in corruption, and handling their investments. So as it happened in Salman’s case, the prosecution matter is left to junior officers. These junior ones may have informal arrangements with the accused or the witnesses, and the result is seen in the poor conviction rate here,” says Singh.
Satish Maneshinde, a leading criminal lawyer in the city, meanwhile, says, “I think the pendency of litigation, which is more prominent in Maharashtra, is to blame for the low convictions here. It takes a long time for cases to come for trial. And when they do, witnesses have lost their memory, have been bought over, or cannot be traced. Further, the prosecution team is not up to the mark. Add corruption to that, and the underworld who threaten the witnesses into turning hostile, and there goes your justice.”
The Bombay High Court, while acquitting Salman of all charges on Thursday, observed, "This is not a case where the prosecution has successfully established its charges. The investigation was conducted in a faulty manner with many loose ends, and as such, benefit of this had to be given in favour of the accused."
Like Robert F Kennedy once said, “Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves.”