Jun

11

Top court highlights witness plight

June 11, 2009 posted by indiatime |

India’s Supreme court yesterday broached the issue of witness protection, a glaring weakness in the Indian judicial system. The case at hand was a 10-year old case involving an influential politician’s son running over a young girl in front of the entire college in broad daylight. In spite of several witnesses to the scene, most turned hostile, making the prosecution’s case look like a made-up crime scene with just more than a little circumstantial evidence.

On March 12 1998, Preeti Srivastava was sitting with her friends, chatting. She kept her purse and lunchbox next to her, on the campus street. Samar Vijay Singh, the local politician’s son, driving with his cronies and speeding in his jeep through the campus, ran over Preeti’s lunchbox and her purse. When she confronted him and asked to pay back for her losses, the pampered brat ran over the young girl, then reversed the jeep and ran over her once again, crushing her skull.

But the initial flurry of witnesses dwindled and the case almost lost its crux when there were no witnesses left, most pressured or threatened by the powerful politician’s family. And the defense argued that the whole thing was nothing more than a prank - …At the most it could be said that the appellants were carefree youngsters who had taken the Jeep inside the college campus merely to have a look at the girls and were laughing when Ku. Preeti tried to come to the middle of the Jeep and the driver backed the jeep to get away…

The original trial court convicted all of the jeep occupants, sentencing them to life in prison. The state high court upheld that sentence. But the murderers appealed to the highest court, asking to throw out the convictions on the basis of hostile witnesses. The top bench disagreed, and upheld the life sentence given to the accused, and blasting the loophole on witness protection -

“…Unfortunately, in cases involving influential people, the common experience is that witnesses do not come forward because of fear and pressure…The plight of the girls (the victim’s friends who were witnessed the incident) who were under pressure depicts the tremendous need for witness protection in our country, if criminal justice administration has to be a reality…”.


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