Unwarranted boycott

There is a sort of mass hysteria being created around the offer of some prominent Bombay advocates to defend the captured terrorist, Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab. The lawyers are being accused of being, at best, misguided, or even worse, traitors to the nation. Can anything be more absurd? The latest victim of this media trial is advocate Kai B. N. Lam. As a Parsi myself, I feel embarrassed that some members of my supposedly enlightened community, including the Bombay Parsi Punchayet trustees, have issued a social boycott against Lam.

What countless number of our citizens do not seem to appreciate is that defending an accused, no matter how heinous his crime, is a constitutional imperative. Under our criminal law system, every single person accused of a crime is entitled to a legal defence. This is not open to interpretation. Under the present circumstances, this may appear to be a silly system, but it is followed in most of the world’s democratic and developed nations, so there must be some merit in it.

For sure, the captured terrorist is an inhuman monster and deserves to be hanged — and he probably will get the death penalty. But that does not translate into a licence to subvert due process. You cannot just drag the man out to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus station and hang him in public, as the Shiv Sena is demanding. Public lynching has been outlawed in most civilized countries of the world since the past 200 years. We cannot go back to the Dark Ages.

And why is it assumed that providing a legal defence to Kasab will somehow facilitate his release? Judgments and verdicts depend on hard evidence — and the evidence against the terrorist is pretty overwhelming and watertight. Unless the prosecution messes up its case, the chances of Kasab being acquitted are remote indeed. I am reasonably sure that Lam has no sympathy for the terrorist. On a personal level, he probably despises Kasab as much as the rest of us, but he is conscientious enough to realize that the law of the land must be followed if we are to be regarded as a civilized nation, and not as barbarians. Most of us may not like what he is doing but, at the very least, he deserves our respect. He certainly does not deserve his home to be invaded and vandalized by a bunch of hoodlums.

FIROZE HIRJIKAKA

leonardo8-99@yahoo.com

Dinshaw Mehta has won round one. His immediate response in The Times of India, dated December 18, 2008 against K. B. N. Lam has added to his fan club. We needed a decisive strong man who won’t hesitate to speak his mind, and we are glad we have him as chairman of the Bombay Parsi Pun­chayet (BPP).

One wonders tho­ugh why a Bombay­wala like Lam needs to defend a man like Kasab who is responsible for the terror unleashed on the city. What sort of Bar etiquette is this where other lawyers refused to touch this case, as they were all directly affected by the happenings of Bombay, but our man Lam has come out to defend him? Naturally one wonders su bawa nu khasi gayuj (has the Parsi lost his mind)?

Does he not realize he could inadvertently, by this act of his, jeopardize our patriotic community? The BPP could pressurize him to wash his hands of this case. No man worthy of his salt would even try to defend a person like Kasab, especially one who has seen what happened during the terrorist attack.

RODA D. HAKIM

Baroda

vadhakim@yahoo.com