Justice is a privilege
I am writing this on Christmas eve. The room is quiet, half lit like it cannot decide between being festive or tired, and my brain is stuck replaying the news from today. Former BJP MLA, Kuldeep Singh Sengar, the man convicted in the Unnao rape case, the same man whose crime once shocked the country, has been granted bail. I keep staring at that sentence in my head and it tastes bitter every time. How does someone who destroyed a girl’s life, almost erased her family, and dragged an entire nation into outrage just walk out like that? Sometimes it feels like justice forgets its spine when power enters the room. And then I sit here wondering where we are heading. Do brutal crimes not shock us anymore? Or are we just collectively tired of expecting better?
A few weeks ago Dileep was acquitted in the Malayalam actress abduction case. I have no authority to say he is guilty, I cannot, but the mastermind behind that crime still lives nameless somewhere and everyone knows it. Years have passed, investigators worked, reports came and went, but clarity never arrived. And if after all that time the one most suspected can walk away clean, then something is deeply off. It makes you ask whether the system is broken or perfectly designed to protect the right people.
What really stayed inside me today was not the judgement itself but what happened after it. The survivor from Unnao stood at India Gate with her mother and a handful of people, holding her pain in public because she did not know where else to put it. She said she felt like ending everything when she heard he got bail, but chose not to for her family. That line hurts. She protested not for attention but because she was terrified and betrayed by people who promised her safety. And instead of giving her space to be heard, the authorities dragged her away. Later a minister even mocked her, asking why she was protesting in Delhi when she lives in Unnao, as if trauma has a pin code. In that moment it felt like we were watching a girl fight for dignity in a crowd that no longer knows how to listen.
And outside India, the world behaves no better. The Epstein case was supposed to crack open the darkest parts of global power. Everyone said the files would be public around December twenty or twenty one, that names would drop, that the truth would finally explode. But look at what we got. Bits, crumbs, a few leaked pages. Shaky videos of victims recalling horrors no child should live through. A list with gaps big enough to hide entire empires. And then silence. As if someone pressed pause on justice. As if the world waited for us to get bored and scroll past it. When justice climbs high enough to touch the wealthy and stops there, what do we even call it? A ladder or a display piece.
Sometimes I feel like we have all gone numb. We read a headline, feel something sharp for five seconds, and then scroll to a reel about cats or food. Outrage has become a 24 hour emotion. Somewhere right now a girl is realising her voice carries less weight than her abuser’s influence. Somewhere a family is learning that hope is not justice, only a thin thread to hold onto while courts take their time. And it sits inside my chest like a stone. Not angry exactly, just heavy, the kind that makes you stare at the ceiling without blinking.
Still, I write. I do not even know why fully, it just feels wrong to let this pass quietly. Maybe writing is my way of refusing to become numb. Maybe it is my protest in a world that keeps telling us to move on. This post will not change a law or shake a government, but it exists, and that means something. It reminds me that we are still watching, still talking, still refusing to forget. There is a stubborn hope in me that someday justice will not need public outrage to work. Maybe that is naive. Maybe that is wishful. But hope is sometimes the only thing we have left when justice feels like a privilege for the powerful. And I am not ready to let go of it yet.
