In France, it has been forbidden since 2001 to show an accused handcuffed. The rationale for the rule is that showing the accused handcuffed damages badly his reputation at a stage of the proceedings where he is presumed to be innocent. Any person breaching this command of the law can be fined up to 15,000 Euros.
In India, we have a different mindset: what the Frenchmen would call au contraire (just the opposite). An accused here, especially the one involved in crime against women, is presumed to be guilty from the word go and public humiliation is only the just dessert he deserves earnestly.
A case in point is the suicide of a 55-year-old social worker who jumped to his death on Wednesday from his Vasant Kunj residence after being accused of rape.
Khurshid Anwar, the executive director of an NGO called Institute for Social Democracy, was depressed after he saw a video on a social networking site where a 23-year-old girl alleged he had sexually assaulted her. Before he took the extreme step, he reportedly saw some TV channels running the clip, accusing him of rape.
The police have found a three-page suicide note in his dairy where Anwar has alleged that he has been targeted by employees of another NGO and the girl was trying to implicate him in a false rape case.
The truth will never be known.
In most cases where the accused is dead, the law and public perception both agree with Chilon of Sparta (6 the century BC), one of Seven Sages of Greece, who famously said: De mortuis nil nisi bonum (speak no evil of the dead).
Sadly, a day before his death, Anwar was more hated than even Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus for a payment of thirty silver coins.
While his public trial began and finished abruptly with his own sad end, there are others living a life of blistering public shame.
Have we become a lynch mob for the people accused of crime against women in the wake of the infamous Delhi gangrape of December 16, 2012? A natural fallout should have been social awakening against the crime, an expedited legal course in cases involving crime against women and a review of the existing laws for the crime.
Instead, we have chosen an aggression, especially in high-profile cases, which is detrimental to natural justice itself.
Is a person accused of a crime against women not entitled to his right to dignity? Is he presumed guilty instantly? Or, we are following some form of extremism in our zeal to deal with such crimes.
It's time we reflected a bit and had more faith in law.
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