I was sad and left helpless after reading the highcourt judgement on Pereira case. A rich guy crushes 7 labourers and injures many more in a drunken driving bout and all that he gets is 6 months. Much worse than that is a fine of 5 lacs. His father must have spent 5 lac just on one constable for tweaking the FIR. Poor labourers from Andhra lost their lives. Their families that already were on the road were dragged deeper into poverty as their breadearners were no longer there. The injured and crippled guys would be no longer able to work. They lost their livelyhood and have difficulty in earning their daily bread. After all these problems what they get is a paltry sum of 5 lac among some 15-20 people? What kind of law is that? A guilty must be punished for the deeds at the same time, he should pay for the damages he has done to the community. 7 lives and many injuries can not be calculated in amount, but considering the fate of the poor families, there must have been a better consideration. Periera was driving a car costing more than 10-12 lac. His Dad must be handling millions of rupees. a fine of 5 lac is nothing but a traffic ticket for those kind of families.
The chief motive of justice is 1. provide sufficient relief to the victim and 2. punish the guilty to such an extent that the judgement acts as a detterent for all such future incidents. Hitting the Pereira Family financially (because thats what they used to tweak the judgement first time) will be the biggest justice. All the rich kids, not for the fear of getting jailed, but for the fear of loosing a large amount of money will stay away from such activities.
Mumbai Police needs to learn some lessons. No longer they can take bribe and supress the events. Media and people like US will shout and creat a rucksuk till justics is done.
I congratulate all the people who wrote messages in rediff, times, expressindia and many more site, wrote letters to newspapers for bringing this change. I admire your sense. Some guys like prags gandhi wrote with poor sense of right and wrong. But come on guys; this is democracy, for 10 nice fruits, you need to have couple of rotton once too.
