When Will I Take The Law into my Own Hands?

The lynching of a man accused of rape in Nagaland, raised questions about mob justice – and in light of subsequent revelations, its dangers. Like everyone, I agree that due process must be followed, and is a cornerstone of our Constitution. I hold no truck with those encouraging “encounter killings” by the police, and neither do I support AFSPA – a law allowing for the indefinite revocation of civil liberties in a huge area.

But what happens when the law fails to do its job? When the police refuse to file an FIR? If the case drags on for years without any sign of it ending? These are all cases where the law fails us. And it’s not an honest failure – it’s not as if there’s insufficient evidence. The government’s failure to deliver justice is deliberate…sometimes even malicious.

In such a situation, I would have no moral qualms about taking the law into my own hands. For the simple reason that the state broke its contract. As a good citizen I obey the laws, I pay my taxes. In return, the government protects my fundamental rights, and provides me with a justice system to punish those who wrong me. When the police, the government, or the courts don’t hold up their end of the bargain, I will have no qualms about meting out justice myself.

There are countless cases in the news where the police refuse to even register an FIR. As citizens, what are we supposed to do in a situation like this? Let’s say as a victim, I’ve even complained to the higher ups and still nothing happens? What if I’m met with resistance at each and every step?

I’ll go one further. A deliberate miscarriage of justice occurs each and every time a court case languishes for years with no end in sight. The state is duty bound as part of its deal with me to complete a trial within a reasonable amount of time. But when the system is so badly broken that adjournment after adjournment keeps getting in the way, when the government refuses to drastically increase the capacity of judges, when the police/population ratio is one of the poorest in the world, how can the state claim that it’s doing its job of keeping up its end of the bargain?

There are two reasons for why people don’t commit crimes. The first is the mere letter of the law – necessary as it is. The other is that people know that some things are wrong. I choose not to be a murderer not because it’s illegal, but because I don’t want to do it. My conscience doesn’t allow me. I can have the luxury of conscience because it’s the state’s job to carry out justice, not mine.

But when the state deliberately fails, then why am I under any obligation to hold up my end of the bargain? If I am wronged and I see that the government is not doing what it’s supposed to do, I don’t think I will have any moral qualms about taking the law into my own hands.

But this doesn’t mean I target people who had nothing to do with hurting me in the first place. I have no sympathy for naxalites who hurt innocent citizens. I also abhor “mob justice” like what happened in Nagaland. My stand is very narrowly limited to me personally taking action against a specific person, and only when the law deliberately fails to uphold its end of the bargain.

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17 thoughts on “When Will I Take The Law into my Own Hands?”

  1. I have to say, with all due respect, that i disagree with this post… The entire basis of a civilized society is that the justice system delivers a dispassionate verdict to ensure that ‘justice’ is served rather than vengeance… If you feel that the system is inefficient or has failed you, you can improve it through various means… You can start by voting for candidates who are trying to reform the system, running for office, start an NGO or a political advocacy group, trying to raise awareness about the flaws in the system and trying to improve them through blogs or newspapers or magazines. You’ve written in this post that the contract you’ve made is that you follow the laws and pay your taxes and the government in return provides you with certain services, protects your rights and provides a functioning justice system. But isn’t there a law criminalizing vigilante justice? How can you claim that you’re upholding the contract if you’re breaking this law; a very important law specifically in place to ensure that everyone is granted due process, rather than a system of anarchy where our lives and bodily well being are at the mercy of the moral whims of everyone. Even when this system fails, either due to malicious intent or simply because it’s flawed, by claiming that you have a moral right to break the law is not that different from anarchy.
    By accepting the contract, you have implicitly accepted the fact that the system may fail. if the system fails due to malicious intent then by all means, stage protests, try to raise awareness and try to put the people who have obstructed justice, behind bars.
    A justice system may also “fail” due to the way it’s set up; i.e. because of the maxim “innocent until proven guilty”… In some cases, a case may be suspended because the investigation didn’t fully follow protocol… if you live in a country that has jury trials, the jury may simply return a not guilty verdict even in the face of overwhelming, incontrovertible evidence… I think this is called jury nullification…Do the victims or the families of the victims have a moral right to take the life of the now acquitted perpetrator? I bring this up because both these scenarios involve the failure of the justice system, regardless of how it was brought about.
    In conclusion, I would like to say that I genuinely empathize with what a victim’s family goes through in such situations. But the reason the system is implemented and enforced, not by the victim’s family but by dispassionate individuals who are not personally invested in the outcome. It’s possible that Ajmal Kasab or the perpetrators in the Nirbhaya incident may have have been acquitted by the court despite all the evidence pointing towards their guilt, due to some technicality or failure of the police to maintain protocol. They would have gone scot free and in all probability committed many more heinous acts. This is an unfortunate but necessary sacrifice of living in a civilized society.

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    • In reply to csn

      Sorry for the bad grammar and run-on sentences… Alcohol and debates on complex issues don’t mix unless you’re Christopher Hitchens…

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    • In reply to csn

      I get where you’re coming from. And I think it’s extremely important to do what you can to reform the system. Raising awareness, voting for a good candidate etc are all part of that. I don’t deny the truth of what you’re saying.

      The thing about breaking the law about vigilante justice. I guess my point is that the government would have broken the contract first – and that could have been something as simple as refusing to register an FIR even after repeated efforts. I understand that often juries (in countries where they have them) can sometimes come up with ridiculous verdicts. But even those at least are part of the law. It’s still part of the contract. I may not like it, but those are the terms.

      I have less of a problem with a flawed system, than I have with a malicious breaking of contract. The flawed system is out there in the open – no one’s fault really. But a malicious and deliberate failure of the law. I think that’s a different thing altogether.

      But I wouldn’t advocate vigilante justice to a victim’s family. I can only speak about crime committed personally against me. Say I was a woman and I was raped, and the police refused to take cognizance of my complaint despite whatever repeated efforts within my power – as happens every day in thousands of villages and even cities. In the face of this egregious breach of trust on the part of the government through its representatives, I would feel morally ok with taking my own personal vengeance on the rapist.

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      • In reply to bhagwad

        I completely empathize with your position too. If I was raped or brutally assaulted in some other fashion and the justice system consistently failed to bring the perpetrator/s to justice I may feel angry and betrayed, perhaps enough to take matters into my own hands. I don’t think any of us can predict our own reactions to such transgressions until we’re directly affected by them.

        The thing about this issue is that, even satisfying my personal vendetta in such a situation is really just a makeshift solution to a single manifestation of a much larger problem with the justice apparatus. We depend on the state for a lot; everything from the internet, roads, clean drinking water to the defense of our borders, containing outbreaks of disease to the protection of our civil liberties. The judiciary is an invaluable part of this system and the fact that this system is vulnerable to such manipulations is, from an objective standpoint, a much more dire issue. Merely exacting revenge on the culprit won’t change the fact the system to deliver justice is broken, if anything it just reinforces the existing notion that mob justice somehow trumps rule of law.

        Perhaps I’m being naive and idealistic. I’ve always tried to separate myself from the ‘Don Quixote’s of this world and try to have a realistic, practical understanding of how things work.
        The present political climate in this country gives me the impression that functional judicial reform is still a long way off. This means that hundreds if not thousands of victims of heinous crimes will never get justice simply because the perpetrator has political connections or is wealthy or just because the investigating authorities are douche bags.

        On a tangential topic, have you noticed how we seem to have all the problems usually associated with big government socialism, but not a single advantage? Privacy and free speech are constantly infringed upon, consenting individuals can’t have sex with who they choose, non violent drug users are routinely prosecuted, there is a mountain of red tape involved in starting and maintaining a small business or to get a loan and laws like the AFSPA allow for the suspension of the constitution. Yet our public transportation system is broken, our “universal” healthcare system is in shambles, our public health agencies are ill-equipped to handle disease outbreaks, our government funded primary education is poor in quality and finally, our law enforcement agencies don’t seem to be terribly good at enforcing the law.

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      • In reply to csn

        Good points. For the personal revenge thing, all I can say is that sometimes you may not want to change the system, but just set things straight once for your personal sake if the law doesn’t to its job.

        Featuring your great comment :)

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  2. I agree. And, you should do it, if you can get away with it.
    Justice system has to be a deterrent to crime, not as a refuge from direct retaliation of the victim.

    I see it from a point of maximum benefit.
    Say, some offense has been committed on me.

    If it is possible that the offender can commit the crime again to me,
    Or If I have suffered sufficiently and/or it is a continuous loss,
    And, It is possible that I can physically injure/scare the offender to not commit the crime again
    And, If I can escape from harsher punishment than my satisfaction at revenge, or suffering the crime again,
    The, I will take the revenge.

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    • In reply to Murali

      Indian jails are pretty bad. Overcrowded, with bare facilities and hygene. If I thought there was a good chance of the perpetrator going there, my need for justice would be satisfied. The problem is, I have no good reason to think that will happen in a timely manner!

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  3. I would like to bring two more events into light:
    1. Lynching of Akku Yadav
    2. Tribals near Orissa/Andhra border joining the Maoist terrorists.

    A gunda named Akku Yadav in Nagpur was notorious for kidnapping women in his area and committing several rapes. But nothing happened to him even after women in that area went to several high level officials. That happened for years. One day outside court he passed a snide remark on one of his victims and in a fit of rage, women lynched him to death. Here women did everything legal for years & yet could not get justice.

    Some land of the tribals in Orissa was acquired by the govt. Uncompensated, those tribals living on Orissa/Andhra border moved into Andhra Pradesh’s forests. Now the Andhra govt forced them to go back to their old state, where the govt told them that they are Andhrites now & cannot be compensated by the Orissa govt. Feeling deceived, they went away when the Maoists picked them.

    In both above mentioned cases, those who took the law in their own hands, were wrong. But as a citizen of India, I feel equally responsible for pushing them to do this. Because it’s me who stays mum till the corruption induced tragedy does not hit me. I still regret the bribes I have paid in past, which I refuse to pay now, as that did swell the demon of high handedness of the law-keepers, which in turn demonizes the innocents in cases like the above two, to turn them into bad.

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    • In reply to Abhishek Oza

      These two cases highlight situations between which I draw a line

      I would support the first act of vigilantism and not the second. In the first, the women specifically took revenge on an identifiable person who had wronged them. Plus, the police maliciously refused to do their job, thereby breaking the contract on behalf of the government.

      The second example…joining the naxals, I can’t condone. The naxals also target innocent people who have nothing to do with their injustice. Also, I’m really not sure about the legalities of what happened to them – was it a loophole in the law, did the government do something illegal? Was it an honest mistake?

      For me, these questions make a difference as to the “rightness or wrongness” of the type of vigilantism carried out. So I would excuse the women for lynching the rapist, but not the tribals for joining the naxals.

      P.S: What happened to your blog?

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      • In reply to bhagwad

        Thanks for pointing the difference between those killing the innocents and those who lynched Akku Yadav. I realize that is indeed a valid point I must agree with.

        About the blog address: By a silly mistake, I missed an ‘s’ in it. My apologies.

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  4. I think state and law has already this right to citizens in the form of defensive action.

    What I mean is, in case being raped, if woman kill the rapist on the spot and she can prove it in court. Courts can not convict the woman.

    Why to wait for getting raped/victimised first and then going to State for justice see if they breach the contract and then taking measures whatsoever.

    Why not on the spot verdict?

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  5. I agree with the author, as going out and getting Justice yourself because the system is to lazy to seek Justice for you is a good vehicle to get them to get off there arse and do there job! In America we have a huge problem with holding government employees accountable for there actions, I feel some examples being made by the people might just properly motivate the department of Justice to do there job… You know… That thing I’m paying them to do

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