But the people expected that if an armed personnel is guilty of ‘cold blooded murder’ then he should not be trialed by court martial. Then in that situation he should not require any sanction for prosecution from the central government. The reason being when he shoots and if he is not on active duty at the time he shoots then he is not subject to AFSPA or any other Army Act. He has to be treated as total civilian then he should be subjected to the jurisdiction of a civil court. That is what people believe and that is what people say would meet the ends of justice.

Bodies of Pathribal fake encounter victims

What further can happen in this case?

The army may not choose the court martial and will say that let the central government gives a sanction to the civil court to go ahead with their trail. If there are men of conscience within the army who would take a view into the matter and will think that yes these men have done something wrong, so, they should get punished whether in the hands of army or otherwise. Second possibility is army would say that even if the wrong has been done by my own members I will still protect them. This kind of approach will be destructive for the army itself.

And if they take up the choice of court martial they will be subjecting themselves to public scrutiny. There will be a section of society which would be interested in keeping an eye on their proceedings.

The law does provide remedy but its effectiveness can be questioned.

But in the context of seeing the past records where court martial existed clandestinely and people who wish to follow the trial then it does give rise to a reasonable belief that justice seems not to have been done.

Points that came forth  after this trial

One side of the AFSPA is it gives armed personnel a lot of authority and lot of power to shoot at anybody. This recent decision of the Supreme Court has brought within focus that this protection is so great that it can now be extended in such a way that it will be difficult to seek prosecution for armed personnel also. So, AFSPA must go. Even an abuse of the provision would enable the accused to get away with it. It would be so difficult to prove that he had done it with bad intention.

So far it was a political decision that should AFSPA be applicable in J&K or should it be revoked but now they may have a legal compulsion as well.

In the present ruling if the justice seems to suffer it will surely have some legal compulsions for its revocation.

It will intensify the demands of people that the law must go. It will add strength to their demand of its revocation. This has intensified the reason and legitimized the reasons for this law to go.

Laws are founded in the conscience of a nation but here this law is repulsive to the conscience of a democracy that you give so many powers to armed personnel to shoot around. We should not be against this law because it is misused but we should be against it because it is antidemocratic. It destroys our dissent.

(As told to SYED ASMA)

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