HYDERABAD, Mar 9: Supreme Court of India Judge Justice Chelameswar today said that uniform policy on legal justice should engage attention of the Bar Council.
Addressing a seminar on ‘offences against women and children and terrorism -challenges ahead’, organised by the Bar Council of India and Bar Council of State of Andhra Pradesh here, he called upon the members of the Bar Council to debate upon it and ensure that the decision taken was put properly to government and atmosphere created so that the law makers understand its relevance and implement them.
He was speaking in the context of ‘Sentencing” and said that it was the least defined area in law and was different from one state to another .
Mr Justice Chelameswar, referring to Delhi rape of a para-medic student late last year, said there was demand from respectable quarters for capital punishment for all rapists and castration but the demands were at the other extreme spectrum when compared to the scale of punishment given in the Indian legal system.
However, this particular offence had generated a huge reaction because of the utter recklessness of the offender who thought he could get away with, he said, adding besides the brutality with which the offence took place and the reckless behavior of the offenders led the people to react in such a manner to call for such stringent punishment.
He, therefore, suggested the seminar participants to focus on why there was so much recklessness among such offenders who could think that they could get away with the law. This required the attention of the law fraternity, he added.
Mr Chelameswar said the responsibility of legal fraternity and Bar Council was something more than holding occasional seminar or workshop and wanted the Bar Council to generate enough democratic pressure on the system to translate the decision taken as a consequence of issues debated by the Bar Council.
He said that it was unfortunate that most of the debates and resolutions remained unimplemented.
Stating that the two topics chosen today had common features in these two events even though they appeared unrelated, he said both the incidents had common feature as it was perpetrated on the weakest members of the society.
“In case of terrorism the weak victims are unaware and become the soft targets,” the judge said, adding the perpetrator had no animosity with the victims except animosity based on a class or section and was related to political problem while the other was cultural problem therefore they needed to be analyzed in depth.
Earlier Justice A Narasimha Reddy, Chairman, Bar Council of Andhra Pradesh, in his address said some of the events on woman had come as a rude shock and questions were being raised that the Constitution had failed to provide security to the disadvantage sections.
He said as the system of the Government that had failed the Bar Council felt that some attention had to be paid to these issues.
Stating that atrocities on women were increasing alarmingly including issues like physical violence, mental violence, bygamy, rape, abduction, dowry deaths, were some of the atrocities, he said it was shameful that women were being subject to such violence.
About terrorism there was a need to question the adequacy of laws, he said and added in view of the grave danger there was a need to examine the laws deeply and face challenges boldly.
Mr Reddy said, “good laws make it easier to do right therefore
legal frame work should comprise prevention and detention and therefore the seminar will provide a good platform for future development on the role of law.”
(UNI)
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