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My parents lost their ancestral lands in Pakistan during Partition. They arrived in New Delhi studying under gaslamps with almost nothing and earned scholarships the hard way to UC Berkeley. There they met the economist and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith — the same Galbraith who, as U.S. Ambassador in 1962, helped persuade President John F. Kennedy to rush military aid when Chinese forces advanced across the Himalayan border. Galbraith loved India from India Student Nights at UC Berkeley. He also got Benazir Bhutto admission to Harvard based on her academic credentials the right way unlike Rahul Gandhi.
In 1962, American transport aircraft in C-130’s and weapons arrived. China declared a unilateral ceasefire. India was not reduced to another Tibet. That episode showed what decisive action looks like when the stakes are existential.
Contrast that clarity with the slow, selective, and often political nature of justice inside India.
In May 2023 the CBI filed a chargesheet against Congress leader Jagdish Tytler in the Pul Bangash Gurdwara killings during the 1984 anti-Sikh violence. In August 2024 a Delhi court ordered charges of murder, abetment, rioting and promoting enmity to be framed. The trial is still grinding on in 2026. Witnesses are summoned, some relocate, statements are delayed. Nearly forty-two years after three Sikh men were burnt to death, the process continues. The Nanavati Commission had already recorded “credible evidence” that Tytler “very probably” had a hand in organising attacks. Successive governments and agencies delayed accountability for decades.
This is not an isolated failure. It is a pattern.
Consider the high-profile cases of Bollywood star Salman Khan. In the 1998 blackbuck (Kala Hiran) poaching case, a Jodhpur court convicted him in 2018 under the Wildlife Protection Act and sentenced him to five years’ rigorous imprisonment. That conviction still stands. He remains on bail while his appeal continues before the Rajasthan High Court. There has been no “victory” that erases the trial court’s finding of guilt.
In the 2002 hit-and-run case, the Mumbai Sessions Court convicted him in 2015 of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and sentenced him to five years. Within hours, former Solicitor General of India Harish Salve — one of the country’s most expensive and powerful senior advocates — filed an appeal in the Bombay High Court, secured bail, and got the sentence suspended. On 10 December 2015 the High Court acquitted Salman of all charges.
The key eyewitness, Constable Ravindra Patil, who was travelling in the vehicle that night and had initially testified that Salman was driving under the influence, paid a far heavier price. Suspended and later dismissed from the police force, abandoned by his family, he was reduced to begging on the streets of Mumbai. In 2007 he was found in a wretched state, weighing barely 30 kilograms, and admitted to Sewri TB Hospital. Doctors initially mistook him for a common beggar. He died penniless in that hospital on 4 October 2007, alone, with no one at his bedside.
Another occupant of the same vehicle that night was British national and singer Kamaal Khan. He gave a police statement confirming Salman was driving, then left India, sold his flat, and returned to England. He was never examined as a witness during the entire trial. The prosecution later told the High Court that he had become untraceable.
When a former Solicitor General is available as paid counsel to secure immediate High Court relief for a high-profile accused, while the principal Indian witness dies destitute after years of isolation and illness, and another key occupant of the vehicle quietly relocates to England and is never brought before the court, the public perception is not subtle. People call it “buckwas” justice — a system that can be glacial for the powerless and remarkably efficient for those who can afford the best legal firepower in the country. Allegations of influence over investigators and the system circulate widely precisely because the outcomes so often appear to track power and resources rather than principle.
I am not interested in selective outrage. Accountability for the victims of 1984 does not require turning every case into a partisan score-settling exercise. It requires consistent application of the law without fear or favour, within a reasonable time. The same standard should apply to wildlife crime, road-rage deaths, and mass communal violence.
My parents rebuilt their lives after losing everything. They valued education, hard work, and institutions that delivered results. Galbraith’s intervention in 1962 showed that clarity and decisive action can still matter. India’s justice system needs the same clarity. Not more commissions. Not more endless appeals that favour those who can hire former Solicitors General. Just timely, even-handed accountability.
The Tytler trial, the unresolved questions around Ravindra Patil’s lonely and penniless death, the still-pending blackbuck conviction, the unexamined presence of Kamaal Khan, and the ease with which top legal talent can be deployed by the powerful are all tests of the same principle. How India handles them will tell us whether “justice delayed and justice selective” remains an acceptable price of political and celebrity convenience — or whether we have finally decided that buckwas is no longer good enough.
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