Flaw and disorder

A 22-year-old college student was shot dead by the Haryana Police when he was returning from a party in the wee hours on Monday (Oct 3). It was a case of 'mistaken identity' or 'accidental firing' depending on whether you believe the first version of the cops' story or the second.
According to the second version, provided by the Hisar SP, a constable's gun went off accidentally while the police team were chasing the youth and his friend who were on a motorbike. This happened "because of the bad condition of the road", i.e. potholes.

He probably forgot that the guns have a safety catch that needs to be released and the firearm needs to be cocked before a bullet can be shot out "accidentally". He also glossed over the fact that the police were in a van and unless the gun was hanging outside the van, it would have definitely broken the windshield. Also, it would be a case of unmatched coincidence that the bullet hit Kuldeep, the deceased, in the head. As usual, a magisterial inquiry has been ordered to resolve the mystery.

On Tuesday, a Uninon minister from Bihar was charged with slapping an employee of Kingfisher Airlines at the Patna airport. The employee allegedly refused to allow the late-running mantriji to board a flight after it was closed. "It's a frame up against me," the minister said in a statement later.

On the same day, Rohit Monserrate, son of the education minister of Goa, surrendered to the police after a long time hiding. He is accused of raping a minor German tourist. "My son has told me he is innocent. This is a frame up engineered by my political enemies to pin me down," said his doting dad.

Just last week, the West Bengal CM, his industries minister and Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan were almost blown up by a Naxalite landmine.

While police from various states were gloating over their "cracking" of bomb blast incidents, another string of bombs went off in Assam recently, killing over 60 people.
As these events were happening, judges at all the courts in India were lumbering back to their chairs and benches after a two-week Diwali "vacation", while more than a million undertrials spent the fortnight locked up in jail cells.

If there is a law and order infrastructure in this country, it is barely perceptible.
On the one hand is a veritably venal and highly politicised police machinery. The police are largely corrupt, underpaid (not necessarily related to the former), understaffed, overworked and utterly undertrained in modern policing methods. They do not understand technology, are only officially educated and have scant regard for human rights.

On the other side is a ruefully ramshackle judiciary. Trials take years, sometimes decades, to be decided upon, adding to the insurmountable backlog of pending cases. In some cases, the undertrials have already served the maximum sentence possible, if the decision were to go against them. Yet, they remain incarcerated. Justice is largely denied, especially to the largely ignorant, illiterate and poor defendants.

If these were not enough, these two arms of the law and order infrastructure remain handcuffed by pernicious politicians who have mastered the art of manipulating them to their advantage.

It is amazing, then, that most Indians wake up every morning and go about their business as if they are part of a well-protected, fair and just society. For us, it is really a case of "ignoring is bliss".