Serial killings are eye opener to malaise in policing: Court

Grotesque serial killings by Chandrakant Jha, who was sentenced to death in two cases, are eye opener to the deep rooted malaise which pervades the policing system in India, a Delhi court observed.

New Delhi: The grotesque serial killings by Chandrakant Jha, who has been sentenced to death in two cases, are an eye opener to the deep rooted malaise which pervades the policing system in India, a Delhi court on Wednesday observed. "The three cases relating to grotesque serial killings committed in the year 2006 and 2007 which shook the Capital of the country and also the faith of the people in the Law enforcement agencies, are an eye opener to the deep rooted malaise which pervades the policing system in India...

"These cases against convict Jha are demonstrative of the police functioning and the systemic abuse so rampant in our country and I feel saddened while observing that the convict too in a way may be a victim of this policing," Additional Sessions Judge Kamini Lau said. The remarks were made by the judge in response to the submission made by Jha during the trial that he was committing these crimes to take revenge against the police for falsely implicating him in several criminal cases. However, the court said false implication in cases by the police does not give him the "right to kill" someone and to take revenge from the system and that it has no sympathy with the offender. "I have no sympathy with the convict notwithstanding the fact that he claims himself to be a victim of police excesses, atrocities and brutalities over the years. "I do not want to fall into the trap that he had tried to justify his diabolic acts. Any leniency on my part would be nothing but showing misplaced sympathy and indulgence to a man who by his own admission has killed not one but many an innocent," the judge said. The court said even if it is presumed that he has turned a "villian" because of the "police excesses on him by way of extortion and false implications in earlier cases, yet it does not give him the right to kill only to push home a point." However, the court, in its order, observed that the cases relating to Jha raise a large number of questions on the manner in which the police functions and exposes the flip side of the traditional policing where there is "extortion, exploitation and false implication of innocents". The court said that assuming the claims made by Jha in his statement under section 313 of the CrPC to be correct, he has demonstrated as to how the police system operates in India when as a poor man who had come to Delhi to make his living, he was made to pay up to the beat constable of the area and on his refusal, falsely implicated in the various cases. PTI