Parliament was brought to a standstill on Tuesday by legislators demanding a speedy trial in the Babari Masjid demolition case even as elsewhere in the Capital judges took a pledge to conduct themselves so as to be more accountable to the common people ... It is a valid charge that those accused of complicity in the demolition of the Babari Masjid are today in key positions of power. This raises questions about the meaning of justice, and about a yardstick that seems determined entirely by who is controlling the levers of power ... Brutal damage was done to the basic structure of society; the attack on a religious structure held sacred by one community was an attack, in fact, on the idea of India ... The perpetrators of both crimes remain outside the pale of law.

Not that things were ever any different; the worst has come to be expected of the judicial establishment: It is taken as given that either the wheels of justice would not move at all or grind so slowly as to render meaningless any relief granted ...