Nirbhaya Verdict is out and all four males were given death penalty for the ‘rarest of rare’ crime committed by them. But there exists one criminal who committed another serious crime related to Nirbhaya case and is still not punished.

If we look at the Nirbhaya case as projected by the media becomes a ‘rarest of rare’ crime with the assumption of ‘insertion of an iron rod’ a theory that is seriously challenged by defense lawyers through human anatomy and also the SC-appointed amicus curie as an ‘afterthought’ of police.

Other than medico-legal evidence, another important parameter that led to the consideration of this crime as the ‘rarest of rare’ by the honorable court is the following (verbatim from the judgment) –

“But the community will not do so in every case. It may do so ‘in the rarest of rare cases’ when its collective conscience is so shocked that it will expect the holders of the judicial power centre to inflict death penalty irrespective of their personal opinion as regards desirability or otherwise of retaining death penalty.”

Citing the example of Machhi Singh (Supra) the Hon. Court stated –

“…the execution thereof persuade us to hold that this is a “rarest of rare” cases where the sentence of death is eminently desirable not only to deter others from committing such atrocious crimes but also to give emphatic expression to society’s abhorrence of such crimes.”

In her judgement Hon. Justice R Banumathi. J stated – “The incident shocked the nation and generated public rage.”

Now if we look into how such public outrage was created by NGOs and take a peek into funding of those NGOs leading Nirbhaya protests (Khurshid Anwar, Center for Social Research, Jaagori, Majlis or Lawyers collective) in different parts of India we see huge increase in foreign funds to them either in FY 2012-13 or in immediate next financial year. Funding to Lawyers’ Collective (LCI) increased by 125% in 2013-14, foreign funding to Majlis increased by more than 300%, Ranjana Kumari’s NGO Center for Social Research received more than 100% foreign funding in 2013-14, Institute for Social Democracy (ISD) an NGO of leftist-feminist Khurshid Anwar received 60% more funding following Nirbhaya protests. All these were leading sustained protests that ultimately culminated in the conclusion of ‘public conscience’.

So we understand that the finding that ‘not pronouncing the death sentence’ will hurt the collective conscience of the society that had led to this incident being categorized as ‘rarest of rare’ case. Another major contributor to this thought of ‘collective conscience’ of the society was the documentary ‘India’s Daughter’ that proclaimed to have held a mirror to Indian society.

The docu maker Leslee Udwin paid Mukesh and Nirbhaya’s parents (revealed later) to say certain things that Mukesh didn’t even know or had no education to understand. This article details out 31 reasons that show India’s Daughter was scripted by Leslee to make Mukesh say certain things that had further incriminated him and contributed to ‘public outrage’. Even UN secretary general expressed his concern following this. The views expressed by Mukesh were not only considered as his views but of general Indian males and was used against him to show to the abominable category of human he was. A significant factor in this verdict.

When we understand that Leslee Udwin did all this not only for her own popularity and showing India in a bad light (she flouted many Indian laws, cheated her Indian co-producers and a criminal case is pending against her), that added immensely to the so-called ‘public outrage’ against the accused and influenced the decision.

So when the views expressed in India’s Daughter were that of the filmmaker and not of the person who said them. So the public outrage that also decided the propensity of the crime should have been against Leslee and to be attributed to the external factors not under control of the accused. Thus categorizing this incident as the ‘rarest of rare’ that shook public conscience needs to be placed on Leslee and not on Mukesh. The mitigating circumstances of his conditions made him extremely vulnerable to the criminal ploy of global media that created a huge public outrage that eventually led to the categorizing the crime as ‘rarest of rare’ and his death penalty.

So if anyone needs to be punished for shaking public conscience for doing business with the plight of a rape victim, that would be Leslee Udwin herself who should be considered as guilty of a crime as serious as ‘waging war against India’ by her abominable documentary and should immediately be arrested for war crimes.

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