On the eve of second anniversary of the December 16, 2012 gangrape case here, senior Supreme C Court judge Justice T S Thakur was today critical about the ways in which anti-rape laws were amended and said “a law cannot be made out of one knee-jerk reaction”.
Observing that “a law cannot be made out of one knee-jerk reaction and it should be made for the entire country after proper deliberation,” Justice Thakur had a word of advice for the Law Minister when he said “one can not dig a well when the house is on fire.”
“A sensitive Law Minister will not be able to sleep as over one lakh cases are coming up in the judiciary every year. One can not dig a well when the house is on fire.
“We need to have an effective system in place to deal with such problems. There is some basic problem in understanding the problems in judiciary.
“Effective criminal justice system is still a far cry for the country,” he said while speaking at the inaugural memorial lecture on “Criminal justice system going wrong” organised under the aegis of K L Arora Chair in Criminal Law by National Law University, Delhi.
“In Nirbhaya case (December 16, 2012 gangrape case) in Delhi, when the Delhi was on fire, the knee-jerk reaction was to make a law, quickly. I don’t know how far it was also correct. When you are making a law, can you react under some kind of pressure? You are making a law for the entire country and it requires systematic deliberations,” Justice Thakur said.
He added that if laws are made for one reason or other, then at the end several laws will be made out of some agitation or hunger strike.
“Law-making has to be more systematic, it can’t be a knee- jerk reaction, there has to be proper theoretical basis for making any laws,” Justice Thakur said.