Faye D'Souza
Rape, outrage and the fight for justice
Ahead of Meghna Gulzar's Daayra, Faye D'Souza moderates a 50-minute discussion with Gulzar, PARI Foundation founder Yogita Bhayana and advocate Shubhra Mendiratta. The panel argues that encounters may feel like instant justice but can become tools for personal vendetta or a parallel 'supari' system. Mendiratta says the better answer is to fix a process short of forensic labs, public prosecutors, judges and adequately staffed courts; she cites one Delhi Uber case resolved in three months through day-to-day hearings, while noting that such speed usually follows heavy media attention. Bhayana says the Nirbhaya case still took nine years and that many lower- and high-court death sentences she has encountered ended in acquittal at the Supreme Court. Gulzar says her research found that capital and extreme punishments do not reduce crime. The conversation also questions headline crime statistics: rising FIRs can reflect better reporting, while NCRB data remains only the tip of the iceberg. Their shared conclusion is that stronger laws after Nirbhaya mean little without implementation, and that durable justice requires police, forensic and court reform rather than shoot-outs or bulldozers.
Why it mattersThe discussion moves past the familiar demand for harsher punishment and identifies the operational failures that delay justice: weak investigations, missing forensic capacity, prosecutor and judge shortages, selective media pressure and poor implementation of existing reforms.
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