COMMENTARY – OPINION:
IPC 193 provides punishment for perjury for up to 7 years along with other serious crimes, eg., Rape! Yet, there are our “learned Legal Experts” that believe “stricter provisions” would stop this practise! (See Source Link below).
How much more “stricter provisions” do our “Experts” recommend in the Law, for it to have some “bite”? Life Imprisonment? Capital Punishment? What difference would that make if it is hardly ever enforced? Wouldn’t it be like flogging a dead horse: an extra 50 or 100 lashes wouldn’t make it any more dead than it already is! But to the myopic flogger, it would appear as “stricter” punishment (making as much a difference as water running off a duck’s back)!
Bear in mind it is lawyers that tutor witnesses on how to respond to cross-examination, lawyers that uncover lies and often reciprocate with creative narrations of their own, and judges that casually overlook the charade occurring before them at the expense of the client who gets royally shafted! And the travesty continues merrily unabated shattering public trust EVEN MORE!
One wonders, therefore, what standard the judiciary conforms itself to; and whether, by this “tolerant” stance, the courts have, in effect, condoned and given judicial recognition to a universally unsanctionable privilege, viz. to taint judicial proceedings and impede the course of justice by lying with impunity?
There still might be some judges around who view perjury as a criminal act that impedes the discovery of truth; an act contemptuous toward the judicial process itself. But when the courts take a stand against such pandemic lies and see it as tantamount to defecation on the Bench, they will send a clear message to other prospective opportunists (especially the uniform-wearing variety) that there’s a heavy price to pay for clogging up our already clogged court system with bogus claims!
It is convenient to shift the blame on others and state, “there should be some moral upliftment of the country men as well”. But this “moral upliftment” should begin amongst lawyers themselves who are the bridge between the common man and Justice.
Integrity emanates from within. If the officers of the court callously asphyxiate that vital element, it could be resurrected by the crack of the judicial whip! But then, they who wield the whip should also be of unblemished character and qualified to demand integrity that they exude themselves.
Until that fantasy is fulfilled, some say ours will continue to be “the very best Justice System that money can buy”!
P.S. I don’t necessarily go along with that ;-)
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Tags :Criminal Law
