बेबाक · Editorial
From Bombay High Court to Rampur jail gate, the rule of law must look the same for everyone
An actor, a school, a police inspector and an opposition leader faced the law this week. Its credibility rests on process applied evenly, not on who stands before it.
One week, four tests
Four stories from this week ask one question: does the law treat the powerful and the powerless alike? Ajay Devgn has moved the Bombay High Court against a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) notice over Vimal Elaichi advertisements. In Haryana, a case has been registered against a school after an eight-year-old boy allegedly assaulted a six-year-old girl. In Goa, the police department suspended inspector Vikas Deykar of the Crime Branch, Ribandar, after Old Goa police registered an FIR against him over the alleged assault of a minor. In Uttar Pradesh, the Enforcement Directorate detained an opposition leader outside Rampur jail as soon as he came out on bail.
Celebrity and the regulator
The Devgn case shows the system working as designed. The FDA said on October 30 that its proceedings against three actors had ended and that the matter would go before the Joint Commissioner for adjudication. A regulator is entitled to examine celebrity endorsements in the public interest. A citizen, however famous, is entitled to challenge a notice in court. Neither right cancels the other. The danger lies elsewhere: celebrity can shrink a regulatory question into a spectacle, or wealth can buy delay. The Joint Commissioner should rule on the merits and without undue delay. The High Court should test the notice against the law, not against anyone's fame.
Who guards the child
The Haryana and Goa cases are graver, because the people harmed are children. In Haryana, police say the preliminary investigation points to negligence on the part of the school management and has raised concerns about security arrangements and supervision of students inside the school. That finding matters: whatever the law makes of a young child's conduct, the adults entrusted with supervising children bear responsibility for what happens on their watch. In Goa, the accused is a Crime Branch inspector, an officer of the very force meant to protect children. His suspension and the FIR are the right first steps. Suspension is not a verdict, but the investigation must be independent of the accused's colleagues, and it must be seen to be.
Bail at the jail gate
The Rampur detention is the most contested of the four. On October 29, the Allahabad High Court suspended the sentence of the leader and his son in the alleged dual PAN card case and granted them bail. The Enforcement Directorate detained him outside Rampur jail as soon as he walked out. The strongest case for the agency is that separate investigations follow separate procedures, and that bail in one case grants no immunity in another. The strongest case against it is that detention timed to the jail gate can make a court's relief meaningless in practice. The facts reported so far do not settle which view is right. That is exactly why the agency owes the public, and the courts, a transparent explanation.
A way forward
These cases point to three practical reforms. State education departments should require periodic, audited safety and supervision protocols in every school, with named officers answerable for lapses. Police departments should hand any FIR against their own officers involving a minor to a unit outside the accused's chain of command, and report its progress to the court. Central agencies that detain a person immediately after court-granted bail should be required to record the timing and the grounds in writing, so that courts can judge whether the detention follows due process or sidesteps the bail order. The test of the rule of law is simple: whether it looks the same from every side of the dock.
A law that bends for the famous and hardens for the inconvenient is not a rule; it is a mood.
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 →