बेबाक · Editorial
From a Kolkata street to a Keralam juvenile board, justice must answer to law, not the crowd
A mob that strips and parades citizens, and a public that suspects privilege in a bail order, are both asking whether institutions can be trusted. Only institutions can answer.
Two scenes, one question
Reports describe an 18-year-old, his father and a friend being beaten and paraded naked through a street in Kolkata, West Bengal. In Keralam, the Juvenile Justice Board has granted bail to a 17-year-old driver in the fatal Cheranalloor car crash, and protesters are demanding his arrest and action against his father, a judicial officer. One crowd took punishment into its own hands. The other is pressing an institution to act. Both suggest that public trust in the justice system is under strain.
Mob punishment is a crime
The Kolkata incident needs no balancing. Whatever accusation lay behind it, no grievance gives private citizens the power to strip, beat and humiliate another person in public. Forced nudity is degradation meant to destroy dignity, not correct conduct. The police must establish the facts, identify every participant, and prosecute them fully and impartially. If any alleged wrongdoing preceded the assault, it must be pursued separately and lawfully. A street that strips three people naked has not delivered justice. It has announced that it no longer believes justice will arrive.
The case for the Board
The Cheranalloor order is harder, and both sides deserve a fair hearing. India's juvenile justice framework broadly leans towards bail for children in conflict with the law. It rests on the view that a 17-year-old can still be reformed and that detention can harden rather than correct. The Board cited the absence of any previous criminal antecedents among its grounds, a recognised and legitimate factor. Reversing such an order because protesters are angry would mean a crowd, not the statute, decides a child's liberty. That is the logic of the street dressed in civic language.
The case for the protesters
Yet the anger in Keralam is not irrational. A life was lost. When the accused's father is a judicial officer, citizens are entitled to ask whether the system will scrutinise the case as hard as it would an ordinary family's. The protesters' demand is not cruelty. It is that a parent's role, and any adult responsibility for a minor at the wheel, be examined on the record. Whether that responsibility exists is contested and is for investigators to establish. But the question is fair, and dismissing it would deepen the very distrust that pushes citizens towards the street.
What institutions owe now
The remedy for distrust is transparency, not surrender. Police in Keralam should publicly confirm whether adult liability in the Cheranalloor crash is being examined, and any official whose neutrality could reasonably be questioned should step aside. The Board's reasoning, with the minor's identity protected as the law requires, should be open to scrutiny by any appellate forum that is approached. In West Bengal, the authorities should state promptly what charges have been filed and who has been arrested. Courts that explain themselves and police who act visibly are what will keep the next crowd at home.
A street that strips three people naked has not delivered justice; it has announced that it no longer believes justice will arrive.
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 FarziUPSC 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 →