Justice Verma (1933-2013)

DEDICATION TO J S VERMA (1933 – 2013)

Late on Monday, April 22, 2013, Jagdish Sharan Verma, better known as J S Verma, breathed his last. He was 80. But through the last months of life, he worked, in a way, to undo what had happened in December to someone one-fourth his age.

As Delhi and India boiled with protests through winter after the savage gang-rape of a 23-year-old in a moving bus, public pressure forced a listless government to radically reassess India’s rape-related laws. The man charged with that job was Justice J S Verma. In 29 days, he and co-committee members Leila Seth and Gopal Subramanium, delivered their ‘Report of the Committee on Amendments to Criminal Law’.

Many of the suggestions of this panel the government accepted, though some, like the one to criminalise marital rape, wasn’t taken up. The Verma Committee wanted comprehensive amendments to criminal laws seeking minimum 20 years imprisonment for gang-rape and life-term for rape and murder but refrained from prescribing the death penalty. The legal suggestions have had a mixed impact.

JS Verma was the chairman of the National Human Rights Commission between 1999 and 2003, during the thick of the post-Godhra carnage. Between 1997 and 1998 he was the Chief Justice of India. Notwithstanding such a storied judicial career, it is as a head of a panel to make India a safer place for women that Justice Verma will be remembered. Which is why, it’s more tragic that his death comes in the aftermath of the rape of a five year old. Can the work of a judge or a law, change a whole culture of perception?