By:

Shoumojit Banerjee

27 August 2024 at 9:57:52 am

Gibbon and the Eternal Crisis of Rome

250 years after its publication, Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains the supreme meditation on the mortality of civilisations. Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) In the 1980s, German historian Alexander Demandt attempted to catalogue every explanation ever proposed for the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE. In ‘Der Fall Roms’ (1984), Demandt detailed more than two hundred causes that led to Rome’s collapse, from the eminently plausible to the positively whimsical....

min read

250 years after its publication, Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains the supreme meditation on the mortality of civilisations. Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) In the 1980s, German historian Alexander Demandt attempted to catalogue every explanation ever proposed for the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE. In ‘Der Fall Roms’ (1984), Demandt detailed more than two hundred causes that led to Rome’s collapse, from the eminently plausible to the positively whimsical. These included, among others, military overstretch, Christianity, lead poisoning, race mixture, taxation, plague, inflation, declining birth-rates, climate change and simple bad luck. The point of Demandt’s eccentric catalogue was that Rome has never stopped falling because historians have never stopped arguing about why it did. And no work in the Western historical canon has shaped that argument more profoundly than Edward Gibbon’s sublime and magisterial ‘The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,’ whose first volume appeared in 1776, exactly 250 years ago. Even today, Gibbon’s magnum opus still towers above the vast literature it inspired. While subsequent historians have proposed new causes, revised old explanations, and challenged many of Gibbon’s conclusions, none, however, has displaced him from the centre of the debate. Antiquarian Puzzle But why were eighteenth-century thinkers so fascinated by the fall of Rome? Their preoccupation arose naturally from the Enlightenment itself, the great European intellectual movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that championed reason, science and human progress. The new philosophy of progress encouraged Europeans to look critically upon the past, especially upon classical antiquity and the early Church. Human society, it was increasingly believed, advanced through reason, commerce and science. Progress seemed not only possible but almost inevitable. Yet, the more thoughtful wondered how secure was that progress? Might not a Roman philosopher living during the apogee of Empire have entertained similar assumptions? Who, in the second century CE, could have imagined that the civilisation of classical antiquity would one day be overrun by ‘barbarians,’ its cities diminished and Europe plunged into centuries that later generations would call the ‘Dark Ages’? And yet, it had happened. If civilization had declined once, it could decline again. This unsettling possibility transformed the fall of Rome into one of the central questions of Enlightenment thought. To understand the future, one first had to re-examine the course and analyse how the greatest empire the world had known had yielded to decay and collapse. The origins of Gibbon’s monumental work have themselves entered literary mythology. On October 15 1764, while visiting Rome, Gibbon sat “musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter.” In that instant, he later recalled, “the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.” But ‘Decline and Fall’ did not emerge merely from a romantic reverie among Roman ruins. It was the product of one of the great intellectual revolutions of Europe. For centuries, history had largely been written under the shadow of theology. Christian chroniclers and churchmen explained away the rise and fall of kingdoms as expressions of God’s will. Empires prospered because Providence favoured them; they declined because Providence judged them. The task of the historian was less to investigate causes than to discern divine purpose. Christian historians from Eusebius of Caesarea in the fourth century to Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet in the seventeenth treated empires as instruments of divine purpose. Eusebius’s ‘Ecclesiastical History’ and Augustine’s ‘City of God’ established the providential model in late antiquity: Rome rose because God permitted it and fell because God judged it. But this theological view of history was increasingly challenged by Renaissance and early modern thinkers. Instead of asking what God intended, they began asking what human beings actually did. They looked for political, economic, military and social causes behind historical events rather than divine intervention. Yet, by the 17th century, the pendulum had swung too far in the opposite direction. By then, radical sceptics, especially the ‘Pyrrhonists’ led by writers like Pierre Bayle, subjected historical evidence to relentless criticism. Bayle’s monumental ‘Historical and Critical Dictionary’ (1697) was a veritable demolition chamber for received truths wherein he exposed forged documents, pious inventions and inherited myths. While their criticism was often valuable, it raised the unsettling question that if every source could be doubted, could history explain anything with certainty at all? Philosophical History Gibbon sought a path between these extremes. While he rejected the notion that history was merely the unfolding of a divine plan, he also refused to believe that the past was unknowable. Instead, he embraced ‘philosophic history’ approach - the search for human causes behind historical events. Why do empires rise? Why do they decline? How do religion, institutions, commerce, ideas and political power shape the fate of civilisations? These were the questions that would animate Decline and Fall. The Sack of Rome in 410 by the Barbarians by Joseph-Noël Sylvestre, 1890 The intellectual genealogy of Decline and Fall can be traced to Niccolò Machiavelli, who was among the first modern thinkers to treat history not as the record of God’s purposes but as the consequence of human actions and political institutions. It was Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy (published posthumously in 1531) which marked one of the first decisive breaks with medieval providential history. For Machiavelli, republics rose through virtù – a mixture of energy, civic courage, military discipline - and decayed through corruption, luxury, faction, and dependence upon mercenaries. Machiavelli’s younger contemporary Francesco Guicciardini carried the break even further. His History of Italy (Storia d’Italia), published in 1561, abandoned medieval moral allegory in favour of documentary evidence, diplomatic realism, and psychological scrutiny. Guicciardini distrusted grand abstractions and concentrated instead on contingency, motive, and self-interest. But such secular historiography came under immense pressure from religious orthodoxy. The Counter-Reformation had reasserted theological authority across Catholic Europe. Meanwhile, Protestant states had developed rival providential narratives of their own. Both confessions sought to reclaim history as evidence of divine order. It was in this atmosphere that Jacques Auguste de Thou produced one of the boldest historical projects of early modern Europe. His Historia sui temporis (“History of My Times”), published between 1604 and 1620, attempted the audacious feat of narrating the French Wars of Religion without surrendering to sectarian hatred. Though personally Catholic and loyal to the French crown, de Thou treated Protestant actors with striking fairness and resisted reducing politics to theology. The result scandalised zealots on all sides. The same spirit animated Paolo Sarpi’s History of the Council of Trent (1619), which dismantled triumphalist Catholic accounts of the Counter-Reformation by exposing ecclesiastical politics, factional intrigue and institutional self-interest. The most decisive precursor to Gibbon, however, was Pietro Giannone. Gibbon had encountered Giannone’s Civil History of the Kingdom of Naples (Istoria civile del Regno di Napoli, 1723) - a pioneering work of secular history - during his formative years in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had been sent after a disastrous period at Oxford, of which he later would memorably recall as being “steeped in port and prejudice.” Giannone treated the Church not as any sacred institution but as a political corporation competing for wealth, legal privilege and temporal authority. It was a frontal assault upon ecclesiastical historiography. Giannone paid heavily for this. Condemned by the Church, excommunicated, driven into exile, he was lured into Savoyard territory under false assurances of safety and eventually imprisoned in Turin, where he died in 1748 after more than a decade in confinement. Giannone’s ideas on history were adopted and extended by an even more consequential writer, the President de Montesquieu, whose Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline (1734) supplied perhaps the single most important model for Enlightenment historiography before Gibbon himself. Montesquieu broke decisively with providential explanation by analysing Rome through institutions, military organisation, commerce, civic virtue, and political psychology rather than divine favour. Rome’s greatness, he argued, contained the seeds of its own corruption. Scottish Enlightenment David Hume (1711-1776) The Scottish Enlightenment and Montesquieu’s disciples had carried this “philosophic history” to its fullest eighteenth-century expression. David Hume’s History of England (published between 1754 and 1762) demonstrated that historical writing could combine philosophical explanation with literary elegance - a combination that would deeply shape Gibbon’s own prose. Like Montesquieu, Hume treated commerce and public opinion as historical forces equal in importance to battles or dynasties while approaching national myths with ironic detachment. William Robertson widened this historical inquiry still further. His ‘History of Scotland’ (1759), ‘History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V’ (1769), and ‘History of America’ (1777) expanded the historical narrative beyond courts and campaigns towards colonialism, religion, and social development. Gibbon admired Robertson enormously. Gibbon inherited this entire tradition and fused it with the severity of Tacitus, his supreme ancient model. Gibbon believed that it was Tacitus, alone among the ancient historians, who most clearly revealed the hidden workings of power – the fear, servility, corruption and imperial hypocrisy lurking beneath the language of Roman government. Gibbon’s staggering erudition was in scintillating display on almost every page. In the opening chapters alone, he moved effortlessly between the ancient historians - Tacitus, Polybius, Dion Cassius, Josephus among others while cross-examining ecclesiastical writers such as Eusebius and Sozomen with almost prosecutorial care. He drew upon Roman law, military organisation, provincial administration, imperial taxation, frontier defence, geography, coinage, trade, demography and religious controversy with equal confidence. What astonished contemporaries was not simply the range of his learning but the way he marshalled it. Gibbon seemed to command the entire surviving literature of the ancient world. Greek and Latin chroniclers, Church fathers, Byzantine annalists, legal codes, inscriptions, theological treatises and medieval chronicles were all summoned as witnesses in a single argument. More than a million words and six volumes later, Gibbon brought his narrative to a close in 1788, having traced the fortunes of Rome from the age of the Antonines to the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 - a span of thirteen centuries. What distinguished Gibbon above all predecessors was his understanding of decline as a process rather than a single cataclysmic event. Rome, in Gibbon’s telling, was already doomed in the moment of her zenith. Fierce Controversy No part of ‘Decline and Fall’ provoked a greater storm than Chapters XV and XVI, where Gibbon coolly argued that Christianity, far from saving the Roman Empire, had contributed to its weakening by turning men’s energies away from civic duty and public life towards the concerns of the ‘next’ world. The Course of Empire: Destruction by Thomas Cole, 1836 Contrary to popular perception, he did not claim that Christianity single-handedly destroyed Rome but rather, it altered Roman priorities at a moment when martial discipline and civic energy were already eroding. The backlash was immediate and ferocious. Clergymen denounced Gibbon across Britain. It was only in 1779 when Gibbon responded with his Vindication, defending himself with devastating erudition and icy composure. It was Gibbon’s treatment of Byzantium that remains more problematic today. He viewed the Eastern Roman Empire with barely concealed impatience, as a civilisation of eunuchs, theological pedantry and endless palace intrigue. Steven Runciman later complained that Gibbon lacked both the Greek scholarship and theological sympathy necessary to understand Byzantine civilization on its own terms. Gibbon’s distaste for what he regarded as monk-ridden superstition prevented him from grasping the intellectual seriousness of Byzantine theology. Yet even where he misjudged Byzantium, Gibbon’s prose retained its hypnotic grandeur. Under his hand, the reign of Heraclius, the eruption of Islam, the Mongol invasions, and the fall of Constantinople in 1453 became part of a single civilisational drama of Rome slowly surrendering the Mediterranean to younger, harder, and more disciplined powers. Every historian who has attempted a civilisational panorama on a comparable scale has done so in Gibbon’s shadow - from Theodor Mommsen and Arnold Toynbee to Ronald Syme, whose ‘The Roman Revolution’ (1939) perhaps came closest to Gibbon’s irony and authority. In India, Sir Jadunath Sarkar brought a distinctly Gibbonian grandeur to his history of Mughal decline. No historical work of such scale has retained its authority for so long as ‘Decline and Fall.’ As Hugh Trevor-Roper observed, “Its intellectual content remains valid today, and any discussion of the course and causes of the decline of Rome is still dominated by it. Of no other historian writing before 1830 can this be said.” Why does Gibbon still feel so modern? Because the anxieties that haunted him remain our own. Overextended states, polarised societies, military overstretch, ideological fanaticism, elite decadence, bureaucratic paralysis and the illusion that prosperity guarantees permanence are not merely Roman problems. That is why Rome never stops falling. For every age sees in Gibbon’s Rome an image of itself.

The Long Arm of the Law

Kiran D. Tare
Apr 11
9 min read

The recent conviction of Amit Jogi underscores how, despite delays and distortions, India’s justice system can still bring the powerful to account

The complexities of India’s judicial system, and its eventual credibility, are best illustrated not in abstract doctrine but in the fate of the powerful. Few propositions are more frequently doubted and more intermittently vindicated than the idea that the law can reach those once thought untouchable. The recent conviction of Amit Jogi, son of former Chhattisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi, in the Ramavatar Jaggi murder case, offers a fresh reminder of this proposition. The reach of the law may be delayed, sometimes frustratingly so, but it is not indefinitely denied.

Earlier this month, the Chhattisgarh High Court sentenced Amit Jogi to life imprisonment under Sections 302 (murder) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code, along with a nominal fine.

Over the past three decades, India has witnessed a steady procession of high-profile cases involving murder, rape, sexual exploitation and abduction, in which individuals from influential backgrounds have been tried and convicted. These cases reveal three seemingly commonplace but persistent truths. First, the law can, in time, reach even the most powerful. Second, media scrutiny and public pressure frequently play a decisive role in pushing cases to their conclusion. Third, judicial outcomes are not static: they evolve through appeals, reversals and the emergence of new evidence.

Abuse of Power

Consider the murder of Ankita Bhandari in Uttarakhand. In 2022, the 19-year-old employee of a resort became aware of an alleged prostitution racket and resisted attempts to coerce her into it. She was pushed into the Chilla barrage and killed. In May 2025, a court in Kotdwar sentenced Pulkit Arya - the son of a local BJP leader - and his associates to life imprisonment. The conviction relied heavily on testimony from 47 witnesses and a trail of WhatsApp messages.

A similarly disturbing abuse of power was exposed in the case of Prajwal Revanna, a member of one of Karnataka’s most influential political families and a former MP. He was found guilty of repeatedly raping a domestic worker. In August 2025, a special court in Bengaluru sentenced him to life imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs. 10 lakh, directing most of it to the victim. Viral videos circulated widely, intensifying public scrutiny and shaping the trajectory of the investigation.

The case of Kuldeep Singh Sengar, the BJP legislator convicted in the Unnao rape case, underscored the same dynamic. Sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019 for raping a minor and intimidating witnesses, Sengar’s case became emblematic of systemic failure. It laid bare how political patronage can obstruct justice, and how sustained public attention is often required to counterbalance such influence.

Long Memories

Some cases have lingered longer in the public memory. The murder of Nitish Katara in 2002, widely described as an ‘honour killing,’ resulted in life sentences for Vikas Yadav and his accomplices. Katara’s relationship with Bharti Yadav, the daughter of a powerful politician, proved fatal. The brutality of the crime (his charred body was found days after his abduction) was matched by the persistence of his family in seeking justice. The case demonstrated that even deeply entrenched social prejudices, when combined with political clout, do not guarantee impunity.

Nor have religious figures been immune. Asaram, once a prominent godman with vast influence, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2018 for the rape of a minor. His conviction punctured the aura of invincibility that often surrounds such figures, suggesting that charisma and following offer limited protection when faced with sustained legal action.

The film industry, too, has had its share of reckonings. Actor Shiney Ahuja was sentenced in 2009 to seven years in prison for raping his domestic helper. Meanwhile, Sanjay Dutt, son of veteran actor and Congress leader Sunil Dutt, was convicted for illegal possession of weapons linked to the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts. In 2013, the Supreme Court of India upheld his five-year sentence. In such cases, celebrity offered no absolute shield.

Few cases illustrate the evolving nature of judicial outcomes better than the murder of Priyadarshini Mattoo. In 1996, she was raped and killed by Santosh Kumar Singh, the son of a senior police officer. A trial court acquitted him for lack of evidence, prompting widespread outrage. A decade later, the Delhi High Court overturned the acquittal and sentenced him to death, a penalty later commuted to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court. While justice was certainly delayed, it was, thankfully, not entirely denied.

Public outrage reached its zenith in the murder of Jessica Lal in 1999. Shot dead at a party for refusing to serve alcohol, her case initially collapsed when witnesses turned hostile, leading to the acquittal of Manu Sharma, son of a politician. The infamous headline - “No one killed Jessica” - captured the cynicism of the moment. Yet relentless media coverage and public mobilisation forced a reopening of the case, culminating in a life sentence upheld by higher courts. It remains a landmark in the interplay between media, public opinion and the judiciary.

The grim case of Champa Biswas in the 1990s offers a different perspective. Subjected to repeated sexual exploitation under the patronage of Hemlata Yadav, a politically connected figure in Bihar, her ordeal revealed the depth of systemic rot. Police initially refused to act, even when complaints came from her husband, an IAS officer. The case exposed not just individual culpability but institutional complicity.

These episodes reveal a judicial system that is at once flawed and resilient. Yet when judgments do come, courts have shown a willingness to impose stringent punishments, including life imprisonment, even on those with considerable influence.

The nature of evidence, too, has evolved. WhatsApp chats, video recordings, CCTV footage and social-media content now play a decisive role in courtrooms. In cases such as those of Prajwal Revanna and Ankita Bhandari, digital trails proved critical in guiding investigations and securing convictions. Technology has become an unlikely ally of accountability.

Perhaps the most important lesson is that justice in India is not forged in courtrooms alone. It is shaped in the public sphere by media scrutiny, by civic activism, and by the persistence of victims’ families. When these forces align, the pace of justice, though still imperfect, quickens.

The conviction of Amit Jogi fits squarely within this broader framework. It is not merely the fall of an individual, but a reaffirmation of a principle that underpins democratic order: the rule of law. Power, wealth and influence may distort the path of justice, sometimes for years. But they rarely succeed in extinguishing it altogether.

Dark Deeds Behind Closed Doors

In our democratic architecture, the Chief Minister’s residence is meant to symbolise executive authority tempered by constitutional restraint. Yet, at various regrettable moments, these addresses have cast dark shadows - emerging not as centres of governance but as arenas of crime and sordid political intrigue.

In the Bihar of the 1990s, during the tenure of Lalu Prasad Yadav, power was often perceived to reside not only in official office but in an informal network of influence. His close aides, Sadhu Yadav and Subhash Yadav, were widely seen as pivotal brokers in decisions relating to contracts and administrative transfers. Subhash Yadav would later allege that ransom negotiations in kidnapping cases (a grim hallmark of that era) were conducted within the Chief Minister’s residence itself. Whether exaggerated or not, such claims reflected a broader erosion of public trust in the neutrality of state institutions.

Further south, in Kerala, a different kind of controversy erupted in 2020. On the eve of assembly elections, a gold-smuggling racket surfaced, drawing uncomfortable attention to links with the Chief Minister’s office. Figures such as M. Sivasankar and Swapna Suresh came under scrutiny, as investigative agencies sought to untangle the network. In a telling move, the then Chief Minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, wrote to the Prime Minister requesting a Central probe.

If these cases hinted at the misuse of access, the events in Chhattisgarh in 2003 were more disturbing. On June 4, in a quiet neighbourhood of Rajpur, gunshots shattered the stillness, leaving Ramavatar Jaggi, treasurer of the Nationalist Congress Party, dead in his car. What initially appeared to be a local crime soon revealed itself as the first major political assassination in the newly formed state.

The subsequent investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation unearthed allegations that part of the conspiracy had been hatched within the official residence of then Chief Minister Ajit Jogi. Among those implicated was his close associate, Chiman Singh. The suggestion that a chief minister’s residence could serve as the backdrop for such plotting marked a profound breach of democratic norms.

When the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in the state, the case was handed over to the CBI in 2004. Yet the path to justice proved anything but straightforward. In 2007, a trial court acquitted the accused, citing insufficient evidence. The verdict might well have marked the end of the matter, but for the persistence of the investigating agency and the complainant, both of whom challenged the acquittal in higher courts.

The legal journey took another turn in November 2025, when the Supreme Court of India revived the CBI’s appeal after having earlier dismissed it on technical grounds. The decision restored momentum to a case that had lingered in uncertainty, demonstrating once again how judicial outcomes in India can evolve over time, shaped by procedural reconsiderations as much as by substantive evidence.

Lost amid the legal intricacies is the story of Ramavatar Jaggi himself. Beginning as a bus conductor in the Madhya Pradesh Tourism Department, earning a modest Rs. 800 a month, Jaggi moved on to assist in his father’s bread factory, delivering goods to villages by bicycle. From these unassuming beginnings, he built a business empire, establishing a wooden toys unit and eventually a hardware network that connected more than 350 traders. He became a close associate of senior Congress leader Vidya Charan Shukla and later joined the Nationalist Congress Party as its state treasurer when the party was formed.

But as his influence grew, so too did the unease of rivals. Reports suggest that he faced pressure to join the Congress; when he refused, threats followed. Testimony from witnesses such as Reginald Jeremiah pointed to meetings in which Amit Jogi allegedly discussed eliminating key figures, including Jaggi. The Chhattisgarh High Court would later characterise Amit Jogi as the ‘mastermind,’ noting the considerable influence he wielded as the Chief Minister’s son.

The case’s protracted timeline spanning 23 years, contradictory police reports and an initial acquittal, illustrates both the fragility and the endurance of India’s justice system. That it ultimately resulted in a conviction is, in one sense, a vindication of institutional persistence. The CBI’s refusal to abandon the case, even in the face of setbacks, proved decisive.

The uneasy truth is that the exercise of power in India still operates within informal circuits that resist transparency and accountability. And yet, as the Jaggi case demonstrates, these circuits are not entirely beyond challenge. Investigative agencies, courts and, occasionally, political change itself can disrupt them.

Crimes without Closure

India’s judicial system has undergone significant reform over the past decades. Yet the recurrence of high-profile criminal cases continues to raise an uncomfortable question: do the influential gain an early advantage in the pursuit of justice? Public pressure and judicial oversight have, at times, corrected the course of investigations. But many cases linger as unresolved truths.

The Sheena Bora murder case stands out as a prime example. On April 24, 2012, 25-year-old Sheena Bora went missing in Mumbai. On May 2, a partially burnt body was discovered in Raigad, but it could not be identified at the time. The case resurfaced dramatically in 2015 when driver Shyamvar Rai’s revelations led to the naming of media tycoon Peter Mukerjea, his wife Indrani Mukerjea, and her ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna as accused. The investigation exposed a complex web of concealed identities, family dynamics, and strained relationships. In 2024, the reported disappearance, and subsequent recovery of crucial skeletal evidence raised serious concerns about the credibility of the investigation.

In a similarly tragic case, Sandhya, sister of Bollywood actresses Sulakshana and Vijeyta Pandit, went missing from Navi Mumbai on December 13, 2012. Her skeletal remains were discovered in January 2013 and later confirmed through DNA testing. Suspicion fell on her son, but he was acquitted by the court. In a 2024 interview, Vijeyta revealed that while the family recovered only her remains, Sulakshana still believes Sandhya is alive and living happily in Indore.

Meanwhile, Kannada superstar Darshan Thoogudeepa was accused in 2024 of murdering his fan Renukaswamy. The developments surrounding bail, its cancellation, and the intervention of the Supreme Court highlighted the layered complexity and prolonged nature of judicial processes in such high-profile cases.

The Salman Khan Hit-and-Run Case illustrates how the appellate process can dramatically alter outcomes. After a trial court conviction, the High Court acquitted Salman Khan, highlighting how cases can shift when witnesses turn hostile and evidence is contested.

In the Ajit Sarkar Murder Case, despite a brutal killing involving 107 bullets and an initial conviction, the Patna High Court acquitted former MP Rajesh Ranjan (Pappu Ydav) in 2013, along with co-accused Rajan Tiwari and Anil Kumar Yadav. Following the case, Ajit Sarkar's son, Amit Sarkar, reportedly moved to Austria citing threats to his life.

Meanwhile, in the Navruna Chakravarty Case (Muzaffarpur, Bihar), the abduction and death of a 13-year-old girl remained unresolved. Despite the recovery of skeletal remains, the Central Bureau of Investigation failed to find conclusive evidence, ultimately filing a closure report in 2020.

On 3 July 1999, the partially nude bodies of Shilpi Jain and Gautam Singh were discovered in a car near a quarter on Fraser Road, Patna, eight hours after they went missing. The site was linked to the residence of Sadhu Yadav, while his sister, Rabri Devi, was then the Chief Minister. In a rush that very night, the post-mortem and cremation were carried out without waiting for the families. Questions arose about police actions, the source of information, and the CBI investigation, including the refusal of DNA testing by Sadhu Yadav and alleged mishandling of evidence.

These cases suggest that India’s challenge is not merely the delivery of justice, but the consistency of its process.

The question is not simply whether justice is delivered, but when and at what cost. A verdict, however definitive, cannot fully compensate for years of uncertainty, nor restore faith eroded by procedural lapses.

Gibbon and the Eternal Crisis of Rome

The Long Arm of the Law

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