बेबाक · Editorial
বুলডোজার এবং ভিড়ঃ একটি প্রজাতন্ত্র তার ন্যায়বিচার আউটসোর্স করতে পারে না
দেরাদুনের বুলডোজার থেকে শুরু করে জয়পুরের ভিড় পর্যন্ত, তাত্ক্ষণিক শাস্তি বৈধ বিচারকে প্রতিস্থাপন করছে-এবং এটি যে নাগরিকদের রক্ষা করার দাবি করে তাদের আর নিরাপদ রাখা হয় না।
যখন শাস্তির জন্য ভিড়
সাম্প্রতিক রেকর্ড জুড়ে, ন্যায়বিচারের ধীর, বৈধ যন্ত্রটি দ্রুত, রুক্ষ বিকল্প দ্বারা চ্যালেঞ্জ করা হয়েছে। জয়পুরে সিজেপি প্রতিষ্ঠাতা অভিজিৎ দীপকের পরে মানহ ছিলেন
The Lure of the Shortcut
The instinct behind the crowd and the bulldozer is not hard to understand. Citizens see a state that too often arrives late, or not at all. In Chennai, twelve cases of sexual assault on women and children were reported in a single 24-hour span, with residents voicing concern for children in worker settlements and urging police to strengthen security measures. In Jaipur's Harmada area, a five-year-old girl was allegedly murdered by her neighbour, Gudiya Devi. When the lawful system feels glacial, the visible, immediate act — the razed wall, the accused caught and beaten — looks like accountability at last. Its defenders argue that demolition delivers instant closure to victims and instils fear in offenders. A demolition can be filmed; a chargesheet cannot. The hunger for swift, seen consequence is real, and to dismiss it as bloodlust misreads a genuine civic despair.
Process Is Not Delay
And yet punishment without trial is not the cure for crime; it is the same disease in a uniform. The crowd that decides guilt in Jaipur and the bulldozer that targets accused persons' properties in Dehradun share one premise — that accusation is conviction. That premise has no brakes: the property flattened today belongs to an accused; tomorrow it belongs to the merely inconvenient. True deterrence flows from the certainty of lawful conviction, not the arbitrary destruction of assets — and a state that bypasses its own courts to deliver street justice quietly confesses the failure of its investigators. The Constitution's promise that the smallest citizen stands equal to the largest lives entirely in process: the hearing, the evidence, the appeal. Strip the process and you do not get faster justice; you get power without restraint.
What the Record Shows
The week's ledger rewards close reading. In the national capital, beyond the 217 demolitions and 237 sealings, the civic body issued 330 show-cause notices for unauthorised construction, 151 sealing show-cause notices, and passed 91 demolition orders — a documented paper trail that, followed lawfully, is precisely how a state should act against illegal building. Contrast Dehradun, where bulldozer action followed a killing before any court had tested the allegations. The distinction is not cosmetic. Meanwhile the genuinely preventable went unprevented: Kerala recorded its fourth Shigella death, a seven-year-old, after 138 confirmed cases had been reported till June 14, with the highest number in Kozhikode district, while a head constable died in Ramanathapuram during an operation against illegal sand mining, his family granted a ₹30 lakh solatium by the State government. The capacity exists; it is being aimed too often at spectacle, not protection.
Competent or Arbitrary
The honest conclusion discomfits both the cynic and the strongman. The choice the week poses is not between toughness and liberal nicety; it is between competent authority and arbitrary authority. A republic cannot answer a child's murder with a mob's beating, nor an illegal building with a demolition detached from due process, and still claim the authority of law. Each shortcut buys a day's applause and mortgages the principle that shields everyone when the crowd's mood turns. The four newsrooms that reported the Jaipur assault and the three that reported the Dehradun killing did not record justice being done; they recorded order breaking in two directions at once — citizens punishing outside the law, and the state risking the same error. That is not strength. It is a state quietly outsourcing its hardest duty, and the bill always comes due.
The Way Forward
The repair is unglamorous and entirely doable. Demolitions and sealings must follow notice, hearing and a dated order — the very sequence the capital's own 330 show-cause notices show is available — and never follow a killing or a protest as instant reprisal. Every mob assault, as in Jaipur, must draw lawful action against the assaulters, whoever they are. Police strength and beat patrolling must be measured against the crime they failed to stop; twelve assaults in a single Chennai day is a staffing audit, not a passing headline. State health departments must treat 138 Shigella cases as the emergency they are, publishing district-level data and water-safety steps. Lawful, fast and effective are not rivals — a competent state is required to be all three at once.
আজ যে সম্পত্তি সমতল করা হয়েছে তা একজন অভিযুক্তের; আগামীকাল তা কেবল অসুবিধাজনকের।
At stake is whether life, liberty, property, equality and speech remain protected by lawful process rather than accusation, mob force or executive shortcut.
No Punishment Without Process Bill
Parliament should enact a model due-process law, for adoption by states and civic bodies, barring demolition or sealing as a punitive response to an alleged crime unless the property violation is separately proved through notice, hearing, a speaking order and a time-bound appeal. The same law should require police to record and publicly disclose action taken against mob assaults during protests, so public order is restored through investigation and courts, not crowd punishment.
আপনার সাংবিধানিক অধিকার
এই গল্পে সংবিধান কী নিশ্চয়তা দেয়No person shall be deprived of property save by authority of law — a constitutional (legal) right, requiring fair procedure and, in practice, compensation.
ConstitutionalNo person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except by a fair, just and reasonable procedure established by law — read by the courts to include dignity, privacy, health, a clean environment and livelihood.
Fundamental RightThe State shall not deny any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws. Like must be treated alike; the law cannot be arbitrary.
Fundamental RightEvery citizen has the right to freedom of speech and expression — including a free press and the right to know — subject only to the reasonable restrictions in Article 19(2).
Fundamental RightWhat this editorial rests on
Drawn from our live multi-newsroom feed — read the reporting at source.
আন্দোলনে যোগ দিন।
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