Courting shame

Nobody will be spared, said the inspector general of police, Kashmir Zone. Nobody will be spared, intoned the director of the Central Bureau of Investigation. But a year and a half after this newspaper broke the story of Srinagar’s sex abuse scandal, several powerful men in the highest echelons of government, administration, and security forces implicated in it have been spared, or worse, protected by the J&K government.

The Jammu and Kashmir High Court has not minced its words of reprimand by terming this a “mix of humiliation, torture and treachery”. The court was understandably agitated, considering that many of the women drawn into the sex racket, often by extremely underhand means, were mere adolescents; considering, too, that those who patronised it were people meant to protect the citizen and ensure the functioning of the law. The original scandal has, in fact, been compounded by the continuing scandal of administrative and political apathy in bringing the guilty to justice in a case that has excited strong passions in the state and brought large crowds on to the streets of Srinagar. It is such deliberate inertia on the part of those in power that has over the years created and deepened the alienation of the people of the region and allowed separatist groups like the Dukhtaran-e-Millat to pour scorn on the criminal justice system and government.

The six-year term of the PDP-Congress government will run its course by late next year. This is an alliance which came to power on the promise of delivering a more sensitive and effective government. The PDP and the Congress have, over these last 18 months, routinely accused each other of greater complicity in the sex scandal. Since neither party has emerged from it untainted, neither should allow justice delivery in the case to drift dangerously as it has so far. Everyone who is involved, no matter how highly placed he may be, must face justice. If this is not achieved, both the parties can be sure that the scandal will come to haunt them when they face the electorate again in the not-too-distant future.