Added to this, subordinate courts, constitutional courts, High Courts and the Supreme Court, are generally complicit in the agony of suffering people, although individual brave judges outshine in upholding justice and liberty to the people. To recall, a single brave independent judge Justice Jagmohan Lal Sinha of the Allahabad High Court had unseated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975 prompting the promulgation of Emergency. All these point out that India is fast emerging a police state under the RSS Pariwar government with little difference between colonial repressive and oppressive system of governance and democratic republican India. Majority of judgments by the constitutional courts, High Courts and the Supreme Court of India indicate inversion of justice and are anti-people, anti-poor, resulting in prolongation of people’s sufferings in the hands of fascist, authoritarian, divisive, polarizing and repressive union government and RSS Pariwar ruled state governments.

People rue the current breed of judges and their lack of courage and conviction as also independence that the impugned Allahabad High Court judge and Justice H.R.Khanna in the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Y.B.Chandrachud. These two distinguished courageous judges are the shining examples with their contributions to the Indian judiciary written in golden letters for all times to come. In his lone dissenting order, Justice H.R.Khanna upheld citizen’s fundamental right to life and liberty stating that constitution or no constitution, law or no law, no one had power to take away people’s right to life and liberty as they derived that right from their birth. The five-judge constitution bench upheld emergency by 4-1It is solely because of lack of prowess of judiciary in general that people are suffering and the government is continuing in its oppressive spree.

New India RSS Pariwar government conducts itself as a police state though its Constitution points us the other way. We have taken on and let go of laws those restrictliberty and give absolute control over individual’s lives to the state. We take them on because of some fear and the desire of the state for control. We let them go like we did TADA and POTA because we the people realize the state misuse the absolute authority. A recent judgment of the Supreme Court validating ED’s near unlimited power in attaching properties and detaining people.

This judgment undid previous Supreme Court judgments in favour of individual liberties. Once again individual facing money-laundering allegations can be jailed and, once jailed, will find coming out impossible even without conviction, also validated by the apex court is the UAPA where people once jailed on suspicion can forget about being released. Several other laws also reverse burden of proof on to the accused like possession of beef, ban on inter-faith marriage between Hindus and Muslims, possession of narcotics and some other laws have similar provisions. In all such laws, the balance of power is in favour of the state. Individual, much weaker than government, is presumed to be equal or even more powerful, is not the case in reality. In all such laws, the apex court has overturned the time tested criminal jurisprudence that an accused continues to be innocent till proven/proved guilty. That is why the jailing of political opponents, dissenters and activists is wrong before they have been convicted.

In addition, the criminal laws that independent republican India has inherited contain obnoxious provisions that actions taken in good faith by implementing authorities, if adverse, cannot be questioned even in courts of law, militates against accountability in our system of constitutional democratic governance. People know that executive decisions taken are generally anti-people and anti-poor.

This provision in criminal laws emboldens law enforcement agencies, police and other security forces to insult, intimidate, humiliate and incarcerate innocent citizens with impunity and the judiciary being complicit. In our system of governance, people are sovereign masters of the government they elect. Entire official machinery, the executive (government), the legislature and the judiciary are accountable to the people. It is in this context that the dreaded provisions in our criminal laws are anti-people, anti-democracy and anti-accountability. These need to be reversed if India is to be saved from being police state and democracy saved. Under the current dispensations, the judiciary is relying more and more on police version of prosecution in violation of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, which relies on evidence before magistrate and not on police version as police evidence is based on extortion under duress, torture, third degree treatment of accused and threats to their life and limbs.

To mitigate agonies of suffering people under the repressive brutality of police forces, the successive union governments set up several commissions/committees on police reforms beginning with Dharamvira Commission on Police Reforms in 1970s followed by others. The Supreme Court judgment in Prakash Singh Case in 2006 directing the union and state governments to implement a six-point police reforms, prompted the union government in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to set up a Review Committee to study findings and reforms recommended by all such commissions/committees, shortlist the minimum workable recommendations for implementation by the Central and State governments. Accordingly, Review Committee shortlisted 49 recommendations that included weeding out corrupt police personnel, accountability of police to public, constitution of Police Complaint Board.

These recommendations sent to States and Union Territories preceded by the MHA circulated a Model Police Act, 2006, to States and Union Territories with a provision for constituting Police Accountability Commission and District Accountability Authority to ensure accountability of the police, including display of good behavior with the public with due courtesy and decorum, have not seen the light of the day as it does not suit the present governments, both union and states. If implemented, the ruling elected governments cannot misuse the police force arbitrarily against their adversaries; much less frame the innocent citizens. Nor can the police afford to abuse their brutal power against the people without valid reasons.

In this backdrop, one cannot help but surmise that for all practical purposes democracy in the republican India is dead although all apparent structural façades of the system of constitutional democratic governance and the institutions thereunder are intact but hollowed out with the result they are unable to provide right checks and balances to safeguard people’s civil and fundamental rights and ensure rule of law based functional democracy. Under the current RSS Pariwar dispensations, democracy is reduced as election centric and at that authoritarian with no responsibility for people’s right to life and liberty. In this connection, the one and only way forward, if democracy is to be revived and saved, is to bring about police reforms without further delay lest the democracy in the country should be finished!