Not a lift from a Bollywood film : The three or four year itch
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: April 27 2015 -

The tragedy is, it is not a Bollywood flick. It is also more than a three or a four year itch.

A meticulously scripted story here. How else does one explain the appearance of a woman, a mother and a wife to boot, three or four years after she was presumed dead ?

Sounds fantastical, the only point being there is nothing fantastic about the story here.

It was just a few days back that the newspapers here carried the screaming story of how a young woman, who was presumed dead, had reappeared, found living with a man as husband and wife ?

Adding to the masala of the story is the fact that the body of yet another woman was consigned to flames under the belief that it was this woman.

The story is more than enough to underline how far can some people go to dupe others and in the process jeopardise the future and life of those who were at one point of time close to her.

Keeping in line with what has become the accepted social practise here, a Joint Action Committee was soon formed and the house of the unfortunate husband was dismantled or destroyed.

The story followed the same script which has been seen in numerous earlier cases and the accused, that is the husband and his father, were socially ostracised and they had to take shelter somewhere else.

In one mad instant, the public became the cops, judge and the executioner as well.

It was a miracle that the husband and his father escaped being lynched by the mad public.

The truth is out now and while there is little doubt over the guilt of the woman, be sure that the mob will escape scot free.

This has been the bane of Manipuri society for too long.

In as much as the act of the mob was despicable, it also stands true that what happened was a reflection of how the people have lost faith in the Government apparatus.

With the Government regularly failing in dispensing justice and pulling up the wrong doers, it is not surprising to see so many people coming under the impression that it serves some point if they take the law into their own hands.

What happened more than 3 or 4 years back is a clear reflection of this unpleasant truth.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, it would be interesting to see how the Government and the law keepers respond.

Will the woman be punished or will the husband and his father have to undergo the ordeal of filing endless rounds of complaint to the police ?

How about the physical and mental agony suffered by them ?

How about their house which was dismantled and razed to the ground ?

Time for all to learn that it absolutely makes no sense to take the law into one’s own hand and time also right for all to come around to the idea that justice delayed may well amount to justice being denied.