A few months ago, in an important case where the young man of an important and powerful family is on trial for the drunken running over of some poor people in Delhi, there was a lot of commotion. What was revealed was the notion that India’s judicial system could be as corrupt as other parts of the executive, when a TV channel ran a sting program that revealed that the prosecution and defense lawyers in the case were hand-in-glove in trying to subvert the case, by offering the chief witness money to change his testimony. There was a lot of commotion and media reports at that time, and even the High Court has suo moto taken up the case. But then the reports died down, and the general impression was that this was a normal occurrence, that there would be a commotion and then things would die down.
However, that was not how this case would turn out. A few days back, the High Court passed its judgment in the case, and ruled that the 2 eminent lawyers (both of whom have been in practise for decades, and have held important positions including as a Member of Parliament) were indeed guilty, and slapped them on the wrist, not by disbarring them or hauling them for contempt of court (subverting the normal proceeding is similar to contempt of court), but by temporarily not allowing them to practise for 4 months.
And what was the response from the Bar Council, they protested against the usurping of authority by the High Court in banning them for 4 months, claiming that only the Bar Council could do so (although they have not done so):
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Ragging is a phenomenon that is not unique to India. It is present in many societies, in many forms and with different names. In India, it can sometimes take on a pleasant sense of introductions, of breaking barriers and introducing new people to life in an academic community. However, at the same time, there are many many cases where raqging takes on a more offensive nature, where the senior students consider it their birthright to make the junior suffer and subject them to humiliation and other such behavior. This has often been justified that it breaks the ice between batches, make for a better introduction to college life, and that it is ‘harmless fun’. Often, when this results in serious implications for the junior students affected, the institute tries to push it under the carpet (inventing many different reasons), and so on.
For the past few years, this has assumed major proportions. In the absence of major efforts from the educational institutions (Ministry, colleges, etc), it has been left to the courts to ‘legislate’ in this behalf; and they have done so. The Supreme Court has passed severe restrictions against the practise of ragging, making it a criminal act and holding the educations institutions responsible for such conduct in their premises. And yet the message does not seem to have percolated through:
This scenario is one of the biggest fears that people have when dealing with credit cards, and handing this information off to other parties. You hand this off to a person purporting to come from a bank, and then find that charges are being piled on your credit card, and then have to run around in trying to clear yourself of these extra charges. It can get real frustrating and annoying for people to have to deal with such kind of problems. The normal tendency is to blame the bank for keeping such people on their rolls, for having such a process where misuse can happen, and for then being insensitive to the problems they are facing. Read more about the incident:
The manager of a Delhi-based private firm was arrested along with two accomplices on Friday on charges of allegedly making purchases using the credit card of an ICICI bank customer.
“We registered a case on the complaint of Atri and arrested Goyal from the Rohini branch of ICICI Bank. The other two were arrested at the instance of Goyal. During interrogation it was revealed that Goyal is the manager of i-process, an outsourcing private company of ICICI Bank, dealing with credit card users whereas accused Ashish Katyan and Dev Aggarwal were working as recovery agents in another collection agency,” said DCP (outer) Atul Katiyar. “The accused used to contact the customers and introduce themselves using a fake name. Then they used to send Ashish Katyan for collecting the card from consumers. Instead of blocking the cards, the three used to go shopping.