Who Are Running Amuck?

It can’t get any worse than this: Remember the Shopian case, where 2 Kashmiri women were allegedly raped and murdered in May? Well, the news has it that their vaginal swabs have been tampered with. Those poor women have had their bodies exhumed – violated in life, violated in death – and there is NO JUSTICE.

One drastic solution to this business of cops tampering with evidence is to allow the victims to collect their own evidence and prosecute their own cases. This is how the law worked in Merrie Olde England. Read Bruce Benson, here.

This disgusting news of police ineptitude and corruption brought me back to a stoned conversation I had with a baba and his bhakt in an ashram in a jungle last morning.

The bhakt took a stand that without the State police, we cannot be safe from harm. Anyone will steal our daughters, he said.

I dunno about daughters, I told him, but in my life I have had a stereo system stolen, a motorcycle stolen, and, most recently, my laptop was stolen in Goa. I have never got anything back.

So the guy shifted gears and spoke of the need for a lagaam (bridle) for the people: a State police are essential for “controlling” the people, he said. Otherwise, they would run amuck.

I replied that it was precisely the State police who needed a lagaam, for it is they who are running amuck.

We are not lawless; the State police are, I said.

I think he saw the light then, for he abandoned the discussion and got to work on preparing a great big chillum. He then offered it to me to inaugurate. We became friends.