Justice on the roads

Justice delayed is justice denied, accepted, but is prompt justice outside the boundaries of law and order, justice? Or is it just pent up emotions bursting out with rage combined with absolutely no respect for the law of the land?

In a 1956 film called the Ox Bow Incident, a group of people hang three men whom they suspected of having murdered someone. The suspects had denied having murdered anyone and one of them had requested for one last chance to write a letter to his wife. In his letter he wrote,
A man just naturally can’t take the law into his own hands and hang people without hurtin’ everybody in the world, ’cause then he’s just not breakin’ one law, but all laws. Law is a lot more than words you put in a book, or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry it out. It’s everything people ever have found out about justice and what’s right and wrong. It’s the very conscience of humanity. There can’t be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience? And what is anybody’s conscience except a little piece of the conscience of all men that ever lived?

This one single paragraph defines today’s clockwork of our society, for is it really justice that makes a man swoop so low as to break the law to provide it? We have court of laws because we are a civilized race. Justice is justice because it operates without bias and offers a chance to every individual. It is this quality that makes law breakers criminals in front of them.

A recent article in timesonline says

Fatal traffic accidents often trigger riots in India because bystanders prefer to mete out justice on the spot rather than relying on the notoriously corrupt and inefficient police force and judiciary. It was not clear what happened to the lorry driver in yesterday’s accident but errant drivers are sometimes beaten to death.

The contents of the article are debatable and whether traffic accidents often trigger riots in India can be argued, but can we honestly turn a blind eye to the many such incidents that we see everyday around us and on television? Group of members of a housing society tying a thief to gate and beating him, people beating the life out of a taxi driver who hit someone, are some incidents that come to the mind immediately. May be a thief and a negligent driver are criminals but the stand byers like us are not a judges or juries to decide on it and adjudicate a beating/death sentence.Our blatant disrespect to the procedure is a comparable crime and as punishable as someone convicted of a manslaughter. If we go on like this, we are saying that we are ready to jeopardize our books of laws and going back to the jungle law where almost any act of yours, intended or unintended may lead to your instant death or cleansing.