Hostile Witness

After the recent decisions on the Jesica Lall case & the Best Bakery case, the Indian blogsphere has a tag making rounds. I read first about this at Vivek's blog. Here's the tag:

Lets say that you are a key witness in a murder case. You saw the accused kill the victim right in front of your eyes. The facts of the case are absolutely clear to you, and fresh in your memory. Now, your testimony is up for tomorrow. You get a call during the night before the fateful day. The caller threatens to kill/harm either you or your wife/your kids/someone-very-dear-to-you. Alternatively, the caller could make you a different offer - that of money. Say Rs. 1 Crore (a little over $200,000). You know for sure that the accused can indeed shell out that much money. The condition is obvious. You must become a hostile witness. What would you do? And why?

The first knee-jerk reaction would be a 'No', simply because most of us like to see ourselves like someone with high morals and strong will. I shall not waste this space on that, I'm no Sunny Deol & this is no cinema. Answering this question is indeed very tough, mostly because its not very easy to imagine yourself into this horrid dilemma.

I don't think I would react to the money offered. Partly because I'm already comfortably placed in life; not playing in crores or stuff, but decent enough to have a decent upper middle class life. And partly because that it would be a burden on the conscience for the entire life; to sell yourself and causing injustice to come to poor victims. I think every one has some threshold and only after that barrier is crossed, people go against their moral sense of right and wrong. Money is not the one to tempt me.

Threat to my loved ones is a different thing. I don't think I can jeopardize their lives for anything. Keeping in mind that in most cases the police would not be able to protect my loved ones from the threat. And, after seeing that in many cases, even after few testimonies against the culprit, s/he was able to get free from some loophole in the judiciary system. This is to say, if I'm sure that the threat is real & the protection from the police won't be sufficient, most likely I would make a U-turn. Turning hostile would really be very burdensome morally, I would prefer to get disconnected from the proceedings, like saying I didn't see anything or I wasn't there.

I'm not tagging anyone, but if you like, post it on your blog. Don't forget to add the tag "Hostile Witness" to your post.

Tag: Hostile Witness