बेबाक · Editorial
A years-long defamation trial and a police protest at headquarters test India's rule of law
A defamation acquittal in a case filed in 2018 and a police protest outside Delhi Police headquarters show disputes being settled by pressure and attrition when they should go through process.
Two disputes, one question
Two recent stories raise the same question about how India settles its quarrels. In the first, a court has acquitted a senior opposition leader in a criminal defamation case filed in 2018. The case alleged he had called a senior political figure a "murder accused". In the second, ACP Manasvi Vashishta was suspended a day after he joined around 100 police personnel protesting outside Delhi Police headquarters. They were protesting his transfer and that of Shahdara SHO Arun Kumar, which followed allegations by lawyers that the two officers had threatened advocates seeking action in a case. A lawyer has since moved the High Court over remarks attributed to the police. In both cases, the machinery of law was pulled into a contest. In both, process was strained by pressure.
The cost of the process
The acquittal will be read by some as vindication and by others as a technical escape. Both readings miss the larger point. During the hearing, the accused disputed the allegations and said his statement had been presented out of context. The court has now ruled. But a criminal case that ran for years after it was filed in 2018 before ending in acquittal imposed appearances, uncertainty and expense on the person it found not guilty. Criminal defamation lets the courts be used as an instrument in political argument. A citizen with fewer resources than a national politician would feel that weight far more heavily. In such cases the delay can itself become the punishment.
The strongest case on each side
Each dispute deserves its strongest reading. Those who defend criminal defamation argue that reputation is part of a person's dignity and deserves the law's protection. They say a careless accusation of murder can ruin a public life, and civil damages alone may not deter it. Those who oppose it argue that political speech needs room to be loose and even unfair, and that criminal courts are the wrong place to referee it. In Delhi, too, both sides have a fair case. The lawyers allege that two officers threatened advocates who were seeking action, and such allegations must be investigated. The officers' colleagues, for their part, protested the transfers, apparently seeing them as unfair while the allegations remained untested. A force that feels unheard is a real problem for any police leadership.
Where institutions faltered
Even so, uniformed personnel protesting outside their own headquarters is a serious breach. Policing depends on a chain of command, and that discipline protects citizens from a force that acts on its own grievances. The suspension that followed a day later shows the department treating it as such. But the sequence also suggests that grievances found no quieter channel. The lawyers' allegation of threats came first, then transfers, then a protest outside headquarters, then a suspension, and now a High Court petition. At each step, anger appears to have moved faster than any finding of fact. The allegations against the officers have not been proven. The grievance of their colleagues has not, on the available record, been formally examined. Neither has yet been tested by an inquiry.
A practical way forward
Three steps are feasible now. First, Parliament and the Law Commission should revisit criminal defamation. At a minimum, there should be a statutory time limit for trials, with summary disposal where speech concerns public figures and matters of public debate. Second, the Delhi Police should set up a time-bound, independent inquiry into the lawyers' allegations against the two officers and publish its findings. Any transfers should then follow from those findings, not from the heat of the moment. Third, police forces need a formal grievance mechanism, with a fixed timeline, for personnel who contest transfers. Officers who have a channel are less likely to protest in the street. In both disputes, the remedy is a process that is quicker and fair to both sides.
When a criminal case takes years to end in acquittal, the trial has already done the punishing that the verdict refused to do.
What this editorial rests on
Drawn from our live multi-newsroom feed — read the reporting at source.
An editorial is the considered opinion of the Aad Tak desk, argued from the sourced reporting above and written under our published persona, बेबाक. We name institutions, not parties. If we are wrong, we will say so. How we work →