19th May 2024 – A drunk underage teenager kills two with his dad’s unregistered over-speeding super-car. If there weren’t enough illegalities in that statement, here are some more. He was allegedly taken into custody (for his own safety), fed pizzas and burgers before his blood test, which was delayed, and then destroyed. He was let off with abysmally poor bail conditions like writing an essay and I’ll stop here because you have to have been living under a rock to not already know the rest.
Today the super brat is free, his parents and grandpa will probably be let off soon while the police is working day and night dismantling the night life of Pune, which is the most obvious solution to the problem. The media highlighted the stench of misconduct at multiple levels – the police botching up the whole investigation, presenting a weak case, victim blaming the relatives of the deceased on the ill-fated night, blatantly lying on national television, destruction of evidence by the hospital staff, politicians intervening - claiming that they were concerned about a fair investigation. We can clearly see how fair it has been. Now, as the super brat walks free and his father and grandfather start to get bail in all the weakly presented cases against them, the only hope for justice, the media, is also uncannily silent.
Two months on, we continue to lose lives to drunken rich murdering brats. One even had the cold-blooded resolve to consciously run over a poor lady twice, deliberately, to ensure her death.
Our silence is encouragement to the audacious to become even more audacious.
I know, it all sounds depressing. But this case did give us hope. Hope that outrage, pure rational outrage has power over money and connections. Hope that a collective voice for an un-debatable truth, has power over blatant audacious lies. Hope that the voice of this country does hold the people in power accountable.
But we need more of it.
I’ve grown up in this country and take pride in the sense of freedom and safety it has had. In order for us to preserve it, we all need to be accountable. We all need to raise our voices. We need to call a spade a spade and do it loudly.
You’re all nodding right now, but the irony is, we’ll all forget about this in a couple of days.
All of us, except for the families of Ashwini, Anish and Kaveri.