बेबाक · Editorial
SITs, Bail Pleas and a Judge's Son: Equal Law Needs Deadlines and Transparency, Not Headlines
Institutions are moving against the powerful across four states, but that only counts as accountability if investigations are timely, transparent and independent of who governs.
A week of reckonings
Across four states, the machinery of law has turned towards the powerful at once. In Uttar Pradesh, the police headquarters has formed a Special Investigation Team to examine an accident involving vehicles in a senior opposition leader's convoy on an expressway. Mumbai Police have set up another SIT to probe Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange Patil's ₹500-crore claim. In the Madras High Court, Justice V. Lakshminarayanan refused anticipatory bail to a former Tamil Nadu minister in a ₹100-crore private schools fraud case being investigated by the Chennai Central Crime Branch, and the former minister has since been arrested. In Kerala, a judge has been booked after his minor son's Mercedes crashed and killed a scooter rider. These actions are welcome. Whether they amount to equal law depends on what happens next.
Accountability or score-settling
The difficulty is that every action against a person of standing can be read in two ways. Reports describe the Tamil Nadu arrest, the first of a former minister of the previous government since the change in power, as a flashpoint between the ruling government and the opposition. In Maharashtra, the ₹500-crore claim has stirred the state's politics and driven a wedge between alliance partners, and a political leader has written to the Union Home Minister seeking an Enforcement Directorate probe. When investigations become this entangled with political rivalry, citizens cannot easily tell whether the law is being applied or used as a weapon. That doubt damages both the accused and the accuser.
Both cases, fairly put
The case for confidence is real. A High Court judge examined the Tamil Nadu bail plea and dismissed it, which suggests the court was not persuaded that the former minister needed protection from arrest at this stage. In Kerala, the High Court approved proceedings against a judge, which shows the judiciary declining to shield its own. The case for caution is just as real. Prosecutions that follow a change of government risk being seen as political, and they can lose momentum once the politics move on. The recent acquittal in a 2018 defamation case, in which the accused had disputed the allegations and said his statement was presented out of context, shows how long a person in public life can carry an accusation that ends in nothing. The process itself can become the punishment.
What the record shows
The details point to a gap between acting and finishing. The Uttar Pradesh SIT has been asked for a comprehensive inquiry and a detailed report "at the earliest", which sets no date. The Jarange claim is, for now, an assertion, and only an inquiry can test it. The Kerala case is the most troubling. Police now plan to seek cancellation of the teenager's bail, and reports say this follows public protests over how the case was handled. A system that appears to tighten only when people take to the streets risks looking as though it is responding to pressure rather than applying law. A scooter rider's family should not need a crowd to get due process.
The verdict
Institutions have acted, and that deserves credit. Still, forming an SIT is an announcement, not an outcome, and citizens should judge investigators by their reports, not their press releases. The rule of law has to bind the former minister, the judge's household and the activist with a large claim in the same way. It also has to protect each of them from investigations that drag on without end or are timed for advantage. The test is not whether the powerful are summoned. It is whether the cases end, on evidence, within a reasonable time, regardless of who holds office when they do.
A workable remedy
Three measures would turn these actions into accountability. First, every SIT order should publish its terms of reference and a fixed deadline. Its status reports should go to the High Court with jurisdiction, so that no inquiry is quietly shelved. Second, cases against former ministers registered after a change of government should go to designated special courts, with chargesheets filed within statutory limits and progress monitored by the High Court. Third, in cases involving judicial officers or their families, as in Kerala, the High Court should monitor the investigation from the first day rather than after protests. Speed, transparency and supervision cost little and would do much to earn public trust.
The formation of an SIT is an announcement, not an outcome; the republic should judge its investigators by their reports, not their press releases.
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 →