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To Jyoti Singh, aka the fearless one

It took three years for us to acknowledge that you deserved an identity and we finally took your name in public. For reasons many of us still can't fathom, you were kept cloistered behind the anonym 'fearless,' fixed by some unknown entity, as if there was ignominy in you being recognized; as if knowing you would bring you disrepute for something that you were not even remotely liable for; as if keeping you in the shadows was the greatest homage we could pay to your tortured body and soul. You became a reference point of valour for women across the nation who spoke about your ordeal with dread and a sense of surrogated experience. You became a shuddering symbol of both strength and frailty at the same time. You became a fallen hero whose moniker is evoked with awe and admiration time after time.
Yet, today, you will be watching us from wherever you have settled, with silent unease and distress, helpless and deserted, like you once were on a demoniac night. You will be dying to badger us with prickly questions as justice gets discounted and fairness gets fractured by the inscriptions of law. You will be sending us entreaties to not let you down, yet again, at least in your afterlife. Trust me, we hear your tenuous voice even through all the violent din of the world, for it is our inner voice too. But hearing you doesn't mean redressal of your plea, for the edicts that rule the land are alien to our sense of innate justice. It is a glitch in the way we have devised our own regulations to living harmoniously in a society. With immense grief we watch the spirit of justice stand like a destitute outside the court of law, and our heads hang in shame as we fail you once again.
It makes me wonder if the norms that were set by the rulers for keeping social behaviour in leash aren't preposterous, for the law in the first place doesn't stop the perpetration of a crime, and when it is brazenly carried out, gives the corrupt a leeway to find a decent foothold again. Ask me not what purpose such laws achieve that neither control vagrant behaviour nor deter immoral acts nor castigate the remorseless delinquents. I am at a loss of words to defend this gross incongruity that is now ripping our emotions and intellect equally.
It is hard to say if justice means strict conformity to social mores or it relates to our individual sense of good and evil. The clash between our individualistic sense of right and wrong will always prevent the complete dispensation of justice as viewed differently by each of us. Yet there is a space between our warring wits that surely knows what is unmistakably wrong and unpardonable. The judge who let your violator off knows it firmly, the men who enforced this inexplicable verdict know it, and so do the rest of us who watch the unfairness of it all in absolute consternation. With deep disappointment we realize that justice is often not what the Justice rules. Between the words that have been written down in stone is a truth that gets squashed to pulp. Such is the nature of law, justice and fairness - together they leave someone, somewhere distraught and short changed. It has happened many times in the past and it will recur in future too. That it is you in this instance is only happenstance.
This however does not absolve us of our guilt of being incapable to provide you the protection while you were alive or vindicate our arguments about the fractious loopholes in the legal system that prevents your violent death from getting a just closure. As a society, we have failed you, both in life and in death. If it raises your ire, you are justified. If it makes you morbid, it is only reasonable. If you feel strongly that we circumvented available options to fix the legal lacunae and we gave your honour scant regard, you may not be completely wrong.
Sadly, politics and those associated with it aren't as chivalrous as you. Their scruples are linked to power and propaganda, and not to passing meaningful resolutions in the parliament. They live with cataracts in their eyes, clouded by their self-interest. May you provide light to them, Jyoti, so that they are not blinded full and forever. May your luminous memory be a stark reminder of their failing, and as a population that elected them, ours too.
- Asha Iyer Kumar is a writer based in Dubai