Wrongly Imprisoned Prisoners
There have been several recent examples of prisoners who have spent long years in prison being acquitted of all charges by the Supreme Court or the concerned High Court after careful consideration of their appeals. In several of these cases very shocking violation of proper legal procedures is also being highlighted as a result of which innocent persons had to spend the best years of their life and their families also had to suffer endless serious problems, apart from suffering economic ruin in the course of pursuing the legal case and its appeal in overall hostile conditions.

While the courts deserve praise for coming to the rescue of long suffering prisoners at the same time it needs to be considered in addition that in order to enable them to start a new life and to provide some relief to their long suffering families compensatory payment should also be provided in the acquittal orders once the innocence of the prisoners as well as the injustice suffered by them has been proved in a court of law. This is all the more relevant as many wronged persons and victims of injustice are from economically weaker sections.
A recent example is that of Nisar-ud-din Ahmed who was released from a Jaipur prison in May this year after spending as many as 23 years in jail when the Supreme Court acquitted him of all charges and set aside his life sentence. He told reporters on his release that while he is grateful to the Supreme Court for ordering his release, but after spending such a long time in prison he feels like a living corpse. He was arrested at the age of 20 and released at the age of 43 in shattered health after spending days of the prime of his life in prison.

Surely in the interests of justice in such cases adequate help should be provided so that the proven innocent persons can hope to rebuild their life to the extent still possible and the debts taken by their families for fighting their legal cases can be cleared. Media reports have time to time drawn attention to the enormous difficulties faced by the families of workers who are widely believed to have been implicated in false cases, the case of Maruti workers; being one of the more recent examples having been taken up several times due to the very large number of workers who were implicated, imprisoned and denied bail for a long time.
Bharat Dogra, New Delhi

New Vision Needed
At a time when people's livelihoods as well as democratic values and structures are increasingly threatened along with the most serious human made and life threatening environment crisis, it is increasingly important for all left forces not only to seek greater unity among themselves but also to become very open minded about reforming themselves in such a way that they can become a very important part of the forces that are needed to reorganize the world on the basis of the basic principles o! justice, peace, equality, democracy, decentralization, protection of environment and all forms of life.

At a time of increasing inequalities and injustice the left forces should have been growing in strength but this has not happened in most parts of the world. One important reason why left forces are finding themselves increasingly marginalized is that they have not been able to come to terms with the fast changing reality of the world and the rapid emergence of many new and serious problems.

The left forces still have a basic and important strength of being identified with the interests of the weaker sections. But they have not been able to build on this important strength to present a vision of a different world which apart from providing justice to weaker sections will also be capable of solving other most serious and pressing problems.

This task should be attempted with all seriousness and a broad alliance of left forces and others sharing basic values should be built so that at the time of a many-sided most serious crisis building up very fast an alternative path of justice democracy, peace and environment protection is clearly visible to people and there are many co-travellers.

Towards this end a new vision of socialism most relevant to present times, a vision which is democratic, compassionate and comprehensive needs to be created, a vision which can become the basis for the coming together of a very large number of people committed to justice, peace, democracy, peace and environment protection.
Bharat Dogra, New Delhi

Samsung India
Samsung India do not care for the limitations of their customers. My brand new smart phone is not behaving as it should. The Samsung people want me to take it to a service centre. I have told them more than once that I am old and that I have no one to send in my place—but they are immovable.
I'd like to cook their goose in my micro-wave oven but that too is a product of theirs.
Mukul Dube,
Delhi

Frontier
Vol. 49, No.19, Nov 13 - 19, 2016