Law is an elephant.
Law is Land, Air and Water!!!
Law is an ass- Charles Dickens.
Law is the command of the sovereign- Austin (Positivism)
Law is… Umm, religion! Democracy! Customs! Mores! (That is the sociological term.) People! Republican! Rules! Guidelines! Sovereign! Socialist! Democratic! Secular! (But isn’t that the Preamble?)
The last definition encompasses a few of the answers to the question, “What is Law?” given by us, the 10th batch of the University, during the first class on Legal Methods. Anybody might find these answers extremely absurd if not downright stupid but you can’t blame us. It was the time when we had just begun our Legal education, formally, with a whole lot of enthusiasm and might I add idealistic ideas. At least, it started out like that for me and I guess it would still take some time, even after one year at Law school to completely wrench idealism out of me. Eternal optimism and utopia are still my favourite words. So as I was saying it was just the beginning of a new course when everybody was trying their best to impress because we had been assured and fore-warned that a) Any answer is a good answer. b) There are no right and wrong answers in Law. A statement I completely concur with now because my interpretation, your interpretation and the Court’s interpretation can be completely different and yet, it could all be right. I was once told that the Law is flexible yet rigid and that in India, the Law is flexible. I am still not able to figure that out but I think the statement takes a hit at reservations. After all, how difficult can it be to accommodate the Gujjars in the ST class though the numbers clearly prove that they are better off in the OBC classes? (The article in The Hindu was an eye-opener on the numbers game.) Also, really, how difficult can it be to create a whole new quota to accommodate new classes of minorities or even ones existing because the other quotas are full though that might clearly push the 50% limit off. Maybe, this is what that person meant. c) As a future lawyer, you have to speak up and that too as if you’re in Court so that means your speech should be loud, clear and precisely to the point. I think this has sunk into me to a certain extent because I am numbering my responses even! Trust me, talking abstract doesn’t get you anywhere. I speak from experience. So there we were all, bright young Law students all set to ‘learn’ the Law.
One of the things which I still haven’t learnt as a Law student is how to get to the point directly. I still beat around the bush as I am doing now to get to the point which is the way ‘the Law works’ or at least the way I think it works. Recently during the semester vacation I interned at the State Human Right Commission, Tamil Nadu for a brief stint and understood, really understood how difficult it is to implement the Law. It was an extremely frustrating experience to see things not happening. So much so that, I was inspired or rather egged on with all of it to consider becoming the future Prime Minister of India or even the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu sort of pull off a Nayak (Anil Kapoor-Rani Mukherjee starrer), if you know what I mean. Sounds incredulous to harbor such visionary political ambitions but really, when you face hard core biting reality, you just want to go out there and change the whole thing. It is when you start questioning, what is really going wrong? Why isn’t anyone bothered and why, the hell won’t people understand? Forgive my swearing but I cannot imagine phrasing it in any other nicer way and neither can I use unparliamentary language since I have been advised not to. I was to assist in the Law Department but at a preliminary level. I was to docket new petitions as in put the case number and district and write out the order sheets. Also, to close old cases and write out the orders that have been passed. In the course of all that, I could go through the petitions a few of which had evidence attached to it in the form of photographs, legal documents and recorded compact discs. I do wonder whether anybody did go through the CD’s because I didn’t see a player or a projector around and besides the select few which did have them were deemed to be ‘outside the purview’ of the commission under Section 9 of the Protection of Human Rights Act. This is the oft quoted provision of the Act, which mostly talks about administrative matters such as how many members are supposed to constitute the commission and who gets to be the chairperson. Right now, there are 5 members who head the commission including the chairperson. I was informed that after the amendment that has been passed by the Tamil Nadu Legislature there are going to be 2+1 members. It works like this, the commission receives around 50-100 petitions, this is the minimum per day and all of them are docketed which includes the application containing the name of the complainant, the nature of complaint, against whom action is proposed to be taken and the place of the cause of action. Then they are grouped in the serial order of numbers and divided into 5 bundles to be forwarded to the 5 members who would send them at their own convenience. (The dates I noted while closing cases were mostly a month later.) The telegrams were first scrutinized and the cases disposed off with immediate effect. There is an inflow of a minimum of 5 telegrams per day. There were all kinds of cases- rape, illegal detention, property disputes, industrial disputes, marital disputes and the all famous, abuse of power by police. The enaction of the State Human Rights Commission has been done to remedy the grievances of the people against public servants relating to human rights violations. The knowledge of this is sadly lacking as people as well as advocates representing people file petitions in the commission pertaining to all and any kind of legal matter. A fee is not levied on the filing of a petition unlike the one they charge in Courts hence people find this forum strangely comforting believing that they are doing something towards their cause but actually they aren’t. Their file like the several hundreds that I have closed will be marked, ‘OPC-Outside the purview of the commission’ under Section 9 due to it being a marital dispute or an industrial dispute in the nature of a ‘service matter’ between the employer and the employee or the petition filed would be just a copy which has been marked to the commission among the several others to whom it would have been forwarded which include the Superintendent of the friendly neighborhood Police Station and even the very accessible Chief Minister, Prime Minister and President of the country. The commission sympathizes with all these cases and forwards their cause to the Superintendents (SP) or the Commissioner of Police (COP) of their districts which means that if you allege to have been cheated by the constable of a particular police station in some way, your complaint is forwarded to his very superior which will ensure you justice. Yes, that is the idea anyway. Sometimes, the commission demands reports on certain matters, mostly, that which involve the entire community from these higher officials but I had yet to come across a case where something had been done on the basis of such reports. The veracity of these reports is an entirely different and debatable issue now. The commission has also distinguished itself in taking suo moto (on its own) cognizance on the basis of reports published in reputable newspapers and magazines like they took up a cause of two women who had been sexually assaulted and robbed by two constables when this was reported in the newspaper replete with photographs of the victims. While closing files, I had to enter in respective columns whether that particular petition was a case of ‘initially dismissed’ or ‘action taken’. In the course of the cases I closed which included the months of February, March, April and May of 2008 I barely managed to write out an order for one case where action had been taken. The rest were initially dismissed and after a while the grounds of the dismissal became so familiar to me that by the time I had read the petition, I could guess on what grounds it would been dismissed. There are various grounds and I understood that the members wrote the orders of dismissal as per their liking. For example, one of the members used elaborate explanations to explain the cause of the dismissal while the other just wrote OPC. I don’t blame him one bit, I mean if you have to handle around 15 cases per day three-fourth of which are not even within the purview of the commission, you would also feel like just scrawling an OPC just by looking at the initial application form which will have the nature of complaint written by the Court Master. He would have initially itself quoted Section 9 so that makes it a whole lot easier. To reiterate the point of writing this post, I am trying to convey the ‘implementation/application of Law’ or substantive Law in action. To begin with the headquarters of the State Human Rights Commission are encompassed in a colonial style office which has a few modern wonders like the computer. I was told that it took them 4 years to get one system with a printer installed after a lot of requisitioning to the State Government when I suggested a person especially for data entry in the computer which would save a lot of valuable resources like paper since they do not believe in recycling. The consumption of paper is phenomenal in the commission, I am not kidding you and the environmentalist in me wondered at the refurbishment of all these resources to Planet Earth. So coming back to where I left, the Law department where I interned is in this lengthy passage which is funnily arranged because every single space is filled with cabinets that have all these petitions. They ‘destroy’ yes, that is the word all the cases only after two years since the date of passing orders. So, one can imagine all the petitions bundled up and gathering dust. Another thing, the office is filled with dust and all kinds of it. Maybe I am exaggerating just a bit but I kid you not. It has a whole lot of dust and sand which attracts termites, not to forget that all the furniture is wooden so it is obvious enough. To prove my point, my hands when washed at home used to be filled with grime to the extent that the water turned black because all the cases that had to be closed just lay in a useless pile around my boss’s (not really, but I don’t know how else to address her here) table. This one time I tried lifting one pile to check if it had been closed I encountered a rapidly growing colony of termites which did not help my mood that day any more since I had read so many petitions and about people who had so many problems and nothing, absolutely nothing had been done. My boss was thankful because she got that particular area right in front of her table cleaned. She said, “Full credit to you!” Well, thank you Ma’am. Around 13 people worked in the Law department including one accountant to handle the money matters and two Court Masters (To handle the cases where action is taken in the Human Rights Court). My boss seemed to be the main person there as she handled the new and old petitions, the recommendations made by the commission, a bit of the computer work in addition to attending calls by people wanting to know about their petitions and filling in when it was needed for other posts. I was astounded with the amount of work which she had to handle and of course, she seemed pleased to have me to help her out. It was one of those days when I read petition after petition and got a bit hyper that I went up to her and questioned her whether the commission took action at all and she very calmly replied that they did and shoved at me a bunch of recommendations made by the commission which I read later. What they contained, I’ll reveal a bit later. One of those days, I suggested to her to get a person well versed with computer programming to do the data entry which would keep things simpler and avoid usage of a whole lot of paper as well. Patiently, she explained and elaborated on the long drawn procedure that would be required to get even one extra person on board. This would require the approval and concurrence of the State legislature as the finances set aside for the commission would also increase and then to employ such a person with qualifications wouldn’t be immediately possible. Also, all the records would have to be re-entered and to start all over would involve a long-drawn process. In short, you can’t just come there and snap! Revamp the whole thing. Point taken. It is going to be a long drawn procedure, I agree but not impossible. I think that statement clearly reveals my naïveté but I am learning. Coming to the recommendations, in the last few days I was given around 15 of them passed in 2008. The cases went as far as 2003 but all of them were thoroughly investigated and the evidence clearly examined. The depositions of both the plaintiff and the defendant were recorded in writing and the judges had made thorough enquiries. It was all very impressive as I read the orders passed right from the summons issued to the court procedure. Fines were levied where the cause of action was proved and others were dismissed where evidence was found lacking or the cause of action disproved. The commission does not punish hence only punitive damages are awarded which would be deducted on a monthly basis from the public servant’s salary because for now, they are claimed from the coffers of the State Government. Finally, some action! Again I retaliated questioning the deterrence value of monetary loss and my boss explained in her calm understanding way that there can’t be a bigger punishment for a public servant than deduction of salary and loss of reputation. Okay, but that’s it? I get back a smile in return.
The recommendations made by the commission can be accessed at these links. This merely provides a small glimpse of the action taken by the commission as there are many such cases which the commission has successfully handled.
http://www.thehindu.com/2008/02/06/stories/2008020660280500.htm
http://www.hinduonnet.com/2005/08/12/stories/2005081214870400.htm
http://www.thehindu.com/2008/06/08/stories/2008060858270300.htm
http://www.thehindu.com/2008/02/21/stories/2008022158980400.htm
I don’t think I would forget any of these cases though. In one of the petitions (‘Telegram special’, they call them) the female complainant had alleged rape and subsequent pregnancy by the owner of a jewellery shop. Apparently, she was still in hiding but the owner was on the look-out for her to force her to abort the child. That was when she sent the telegram to the commission, in hiding. Another case involved the wide-spread discrimination and violence against Dalits by public servants in one of the rural areas of Tamil Nadu. The petition was filed by the non-Governmental organization, People’s Watch. This organization in addition to a few others has been pro-active in bringing awareness of human rights violations in various areas of the State. In another case which they handled the complainant was violently beaten up and kept in jail on flimsy grounds as the fact that he was a Muslim angered the police officials well enough. Another case they advocated against was the usurpation of Government allocated property to the Dalits by their non-Dalit neighbours. Dalit violations are still a rampant phenomenon, I figured after reading the many petitions. There was also a petition calling the attention of the commission to manual scavenging and the discrimination made in selecting people to do the job as most of them were… you guessed it, Dalits. This was like seeing the stuff written about in the articles in Sociology in action. Marital disputes in the form of divorce on grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, threat from parents due to love marriages and problems from in-laws are common enough. In one of the petitions, the complainant wife alleged the ruination of her reputation by the husband as reports of the couple were published in the news paper. She had allegedly stolen furniture from her husband’s office premises and had taken off to another state. There were also petitions addressed to the Chief Minister, his grievance cell, the Prime Minister, the President and also to heads of educational institutions. One of them was a requisition for money to purchase medicines required to bear a kidney transplant which hadn’t suited the complainant’s body, another requested for the grievances to be looked into specifically by them and one of the them also involved the filing of the writ of mandamus in the Supreme Court, a very elaborate and personally written complaint by the plaintiff. There were complaints of assault against teachers as well as complaints against the working of the institution which required the students to carry a heavy and not required load of books. Promotion matters delayed due to various circumstances were another matter all together. Hospital matters like indicting the people working there in false cases due to the faults of doctors and nurses were horrifying to read about. The oft made complaint against police officials was their glaring abuse of power in the form of violence which took the most heinous forms (some of it is just unmentionable), illegal detention (You can stay forever in the jail without even knowing precisely what you’re indicted for. Sometimes they operate on their hunches of certain people, at others there are people who pass them clues.) and their attempts to indict people in false cases or getting them to part with evidence, in a few cases destroying the evidence as well. One of the horrifying cases involved a constable sexually assaulting a woman and abusing her in the filthiest language possible in order to get her to move out of a house of which she was the tenant. She had been used to the threats when one day they took an ugly turn and the constable turned up at her place. Abuse by woman superintendents and constables is common enough as well. They abuse the male victims in the lock-ups and nobody there stops them. They also do not stop the male perpetrators of violence against women. Talk about sisterly love! In a very recent petition I docketed there were 4 telegrams alleging violations of assault and illegal detention against the same constable in a particular district. They all alleged the same and since my stint there is over, I have no idea what has happened of the telegrams whether any action was taken or was it merely forwarded to the SP in that district.
On one hand it is frustrating to go through the cases and not know whether something is being done to redress the crimes but on the other, you can’t help but admire the efficiency of the organization as all the records of every single petition are maintained perfectly. More than anything, it is the enthusiasm of the people working there that keeps it going. The same old routine, the same complaints (People file 2-3 petitions subsequently after they file the first one thinking that it will help move up their matter faster. Nothing happens to the petitions they are attached to one case only as the grievance alleged will be the same in all 3. The case I went through in which 3 petitions had been filed was an OPC.) and the utter lack of awareness among people and advocates alike about the nature of the complaints handled by the commission is mystifying. It is admirable to see everybody busy at work in the Law department especially the Court Masters who scrutinize all the petitions as well as issue summons (I was also asked to address envelops to the parties involved.). It is after all, re-assuring to know at the end of the day that there is somebody who cares enough to read my complaint
Maybe I have given you the very serious side of how things work at the SHRC but it is not all that. Why just the other day, one of the employees’ brother got married and the whole department was invited. They all contributed towards the gift in the form of cash. My boss made the list of contributors and inserted it in the traditional brown envelope with the cash and printed out SHRC on the front of the envelope. The other day one of the members retired so the whole of SHRC (Including me, you see, I became family and did get a wee bit emotional about leaving the place.) was treated for lunch. I was there during the salary day as well which was the happiest I had seen people there. There are 4 female employees including my boss in the Law department and despite all the work they maintain a happy banter around the place with all their gossip and new cookery recipes. Don’t ask me how I know but I just do. Oh there comes the coffee guy…It’s 4:30 and time for a breather. Guess which fruit they are all sharing among themselves this time…Papaya! (A few days back it was mango and before that they were distributing coconuts and coconut water from the tree on the premises.)
It is yet another Monday morning at the SHRC and you find police officials (a whole lot of them), advocates and people with grievances milling around the Law department. There the phone rings again… There is an enquiry… A huge register is opened… What is the number again? Oh, that one? Sorry, OPC.
The author does not intend any ridicule towards the organization and is speaking entirely from her experience there, a very brief stint at that which had her spilling tea on the already overloaded desk, writing ‘Chennai’ for all the petitions on the first day, attaching two different petitions together and on the last day she accidentally misplaced one. In her defence, the paper used is extremely thin and sometimes two different petitions just get attached together and also, the petitions should have been in serial order of numbers which they weren’t and I did alert my boss that one particular petition was missing. For the tea…well, it was my clumsy day and I am human after all.
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