The Sanjay Dutt Case

Was watching a debate just now between Justice Katju and Subramanian Swamy on pardoning Sanjay Dutt. The former thinks Sanjay Dutt should be pardoned on humanitarian grounds, while the latter quotes some Articles and says pardoning is justified only if it serves some public good. Justice Katju does not deny Swami, but goes on to quote some Nanavati case where the pardon was granted in spite of no public good served. The grounds, as pointed by Arnab Goswami - the anchor of the debate, were not Humanitarian either, in case of the Nanavati case. They were all power and politics. After hearing both sides in the debate today, and they are probably going to be the two sides in Supreme Court soon, and from my own point of view, I feel there is no reason to pardon Sanjay Dutt. The sentence is not so severe - just 3 more years, and is in fact in proportion to the crime committed. Also Dutt is not a poor guy who's lived under social torture, seclusion or abandonment, nor has be been thrown into gutter or ill-treated by society or anything which can be said to be even remotely equivalent to already having suffered for what he's done. He's lived a great celebrity life, so rewarding that his going to jail is gonna hurt business lobbies, and so they want him out. It's all money speaking now. The only possible public good I can see in granting him pardon is to set an example by penalizing our judicial system in a way for being so slow and late in pronouncing judgments and closing appeals, so as to make sure the same thing doesn't happen in future, and Dutt being a harmless person now, there will be no public harm by his being out. But I am 100% sure that our judicial system will not improve by this one case. For one, this is India. And secondly, the backlog itself must be so huge that even wanting to improve the scenario won't lead us far. On the contrary, we will end up setting examples for hundreds of such cases of delayed judgments, who will start demanding pardon quoting Dutt's precedent. So, forget it. To conclude, it is not justified that the whole intellectual machinery of the country debates this case of a celebrity, except for increasing TRP ratings of TV channels and for bringing more people in limelight for having points of view and claim to 2 minutes of fame.