Justice delayed is as good as justice denied

Once in a while, a fleeting image engraves itself into human conscience because, somehow, it touches the heart. The girl running away from a napalm bomb in Vietnam was one of the millions of victims of that war back in 1970.

But that frame is frozen in the mind. So is the image of that tailor in Ahmedabad, tears welling up in the eyes, hands folded in complete subjugation and his whole demeanour appealing for mercy. He, too, was one among the thousands of victims of Gujarat riots but it is his face that comes first to mind when you think of communal violence in that state.

The latest addition to this list is the image of the lady jumping off a window on the seventh floor of Carlton Towers. She and three others plunged to save their lives but simply could not, and though the number of casualties in the fire in that building was pretty small, it too joins the list of completely avoidable tragedies in Bangalore over the last 30 years, all because of lack of precaution and supervision by the authorities.

If it was a case of a completely shut alternative exit in Carlton Towers, in the case of Venus circus back in 1980, it was a case of allowing a circus tent to be put up pretty close to an overhead power line. One spark and over 80 children enjoying the show were charred.

A couple of years later, the Gangaram building in the busy Majestic area collapsed because it was reportedly built violating norms. Over 100 labourers would not have died in that tragedy if the builders were a bit more responsible.

One is not counting in this list the biggest of the tragedies, the liquor tragedy of 1982 in which 350 died after consuming poisonous hooch because bootlegging works outside the domain of those with the power to enforce law.

A city of this size will continue to see such traumatic events periodically and raise questions. Questions such as whether the force, trained to deal with such events, really has the capability to do so, whether enforcement agencies are complicit in such acts of negligence and whether they are pretty insensitive generally and do not bother if some lives are lost.

These questions are asked every time there is a major tragedy and there are the usual answers as well from the authorities; we will launch an inquiry, we will punish the guilty and so on. You may even have a couple of arrests for a short while. It rarely goes beyond that.

If, for instance, either the builder or the current owners of Carlton Towers were responsible for not providing enough fire exits or were negligent in closing such exits, punishment will be so long in coming that it makes no difference at all. It certainly makes no difference to those who continue to violate building laws in high-rise structures.

The fire department guys are rarely negligent. Ask them and they will produce a list of high-rise buildings in the city, without proper safety elements, in a jiffy. Probably, that is all they can do. The biggest culprit is the BBMP. Its engineers rarely inspect buildings while they are being built to ensure that there are no deviations.

That is what they are paid for and that is what they don’t do. That is why you will periodically have accidents that result in unnecessary loss of lives because of wanton negligence, whether it is a loose hanging power line or a locked fire exit.

No one is ever punished sufficiently harshly for such negligence. Worse still; no official is ever punished for neglecting his duty either and that is a pity.