Influence and injustice

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The disturbing culmination of the case in Karachi, where a wealthy CEO was caught on video assaulting a motorcyclist in front of his sister in DHA, has again exposed the rot in our justice system. Despite overwhelming video evidence and eyewitness accounts, the victim, Dheeraj, a member of a minority community, has filed an affidavit blaming himself for the incident and withdrawn his complaint. But even if he was responsible for the accident, nothing gave the CEO the right to thrash the motorcyclist, or to be more precise, have his goons thrash the young man.

In a nation of laws, that CEO would have been within his rights to file a case against the motorcyclist and demand compensation for the damage, and Dheeraj would have to either scrounge up the money or face jail time for property damage.

However, by acting like a street thug and ordering the thrashing of someone who had slighted him, the CEO should have been facing the full force of the law. Instead, we all saw the photo op of him 'behind bars' in jail, his clothes in immaculate condition and the cell unlocked, lest he feel claustrophobic for even a few seconds.

The complainant in the original FIR was an eyewitness because the poor victim was either afraid or paid off to keep quiet. This had set the stage for the CEO's eventual release, as the eyewitness was never likely to spend his own time and money to follow up for court proceedings, and due to the many legal loopholes set up specifically to keep the rich out of jail, the case could not proceed without a cooperating victim, even though the police had irrefutable evidence showing victim being thrashed.

The case also exposes the weakness of our civil laws. In many countries, lawyers working on 'no-win, no-fee' models would have been willing to sue the wealthy CEO and reaped a windfall for the victim and themselves. No such interest is generated by similar cases here due to the difficulty in obtaining a sizeable court settlement. While not the most noble of motives, money can be a big motivator in the pursuit of justice.