Adv.Asim Sarode, India
Selected as an Ashoka Fellow in 2007
By setting up a victim support and witness protection program, Asim Sarode is seeking to change the power equation between the judiciary, witnesses and victims. Asim builds bridges between crime victims, their families, witnesses and their communities, as well as with the police, judges and lawyers to enable vulnerable populations to understand legal mechanisms and access justice.
The New Idea
According to Asim, “Every law is a social legislation and needs to be interpreted socially”. Through his work with the Sahayog Trust, Asim is seeking to answer the critical question of who interprets the law, and how to empower those vulnerable groups that have the toughest time accessing justice.
Asim works in different ways across three spectrums:
He builds knowledge about, and ways to negotiate the judicial system among victims and witnesses of crimes, especially those from marginalized populations.
He seeks to humanize the judicial system by building empathy with those who comprise the enforcement arm of the judicial system- police, lawyers and judges
He also sets up support systems outside the legal framework by working with the families and communities of victims and witnesses. He disseminates case studies and generates a larger public culture debate about access to justice through his work with the media.
By setting up a victim and witness protection programme, Asim is trying to change the prevalent top-down power equation, so that witnesses and victims are treated with respect and empathy, and eventually recapture their lost faith to become ambassadors of an effective, humane judicial system.
The Problem:
Despite the high incidence of crime and a low rate of conviction, India- unlike most developed countries, does not have a comprehensive witness protection program to safeguard witnesses in crucial cases.[1] This gap is especially emphasized when vulnerable groups seek to access justice through legal mechanisms. Such groups include women who are victims of domestic and/or sexual violence, children and those who are in danger of communal violence or under threat of intimidation from organized crime. The two key problems of a lack of faith in legal and judicial systems, and low rates of convictions are interconnected.
For witnesses, victims and their communities/families/support mechanisms, the legal system in place spans the police, lawyers- especially public prosecutors and the judiciary. While the onus of protecting the witnesses currently lies with the police, widespread corruption and bribery mean that there is little faith in their effectiveness. The judicial system too is seen as unapproachable and the processes in place to access legal systems are not pro-people. Beginning from the time a victim reaches a police station to report a crime to when s/he joins the proceedings in a court of law; witnesses and victims are given little respect or importance and are often bullied or belittled.
Access to justice is even tougher for marginalized groups, who may not have adequate information, familiarity or comfort to negotiate legalese and the tricky power dynamics between those who seek justice and those who are mandated to deliver it. For example, poor and/or rural rape victims who are represented by public prosecutors are often belabored with intrusive, demeaning questions- and are not aware that they can object to such treatment. This prevalent passive culture of not asking questions or demanding rights also pervades additional support systems- families and communities are worried about risking their safety and increasingly sensationalized media exposure in return for a lengthy, tortuous legal process about which they have limited understanding or confidence. In a highly stratified society, which is skewed towards class, caste, community and gender power, the pressure to speak falsely or the temptation to leave midway and turn ‘hostile’ is significant.
Asim’s work seeks to address the clear need for legal and moral support for victims, witnesses as well as victims who are also witnesses.
The Strategy
Asim believes in “advocacy after authority”, which means that he builds a volume of successful case studies where direct legal intervention has led to victim and/or witness protection, and then uses legal precedent to argue for changes with the judiciary.
Asim holds regular trainings in law colleges on how to build a rapport with witnesses. He also runs workshops for the police on human rights sensitization. He also functions as a watchdog for the judiciary through his work as a pro bono public prosecutor. In one recent instance, Asim used the Right to information Act to put together a blacklist of ‘stock witnesses’ who frequently work as tutored police witnesses.
Asim uses multiple strategies to arm marginalized groups with knowledge about the judiciary. These range from creating and disseminating booklets about legal procedures in simple language to developing games that make legalese accessible. He also uses role play and street theatre, sometimes actual court visits before a trial to ensure victims’ comfort with unfamiliar surroundings, and to assuage their fear of uniformed Government lawyers and judges. Asim also works on educating the larger community, which often forms the sustained support system for the witness/victim.
Asim uses the local print and electronic media to spread information about his approach and aims. A prolific writer of articles showcasing the socio-legal perspective, he has developed a media network which follows his cases. He also travels frequently to rural towns and villages, where he holds public meetings and debates that seek to demystify access to justice.
In the near future, Asim hopes to set up a help line that will provide both legal and moral support to victims and witnesses. He has also convinced a large automobile manufacturer to lend him a car for a road show across Maharashtra.
Asim is doing the social justice lawyering. He strongly believes that Social Justice Lawyering is necessarily an activist lawyering which transforms the power relations and thus facilitates the assertions of rights and entitlement of the poor through legal process. His legal interventions focus on social transformation through use of Law.
Key characteristics of the socio-legal lawyering which Asim Sarode is doing are-
1. It is not at all charity based only but emphasizing more on the right based perspective.
2. It allows Equal space for advocate to deal with the case as well as other activities- Traditional lawyering is based on taking advantage of the fear about law in the minds of lay persons. But social justice law practice is about demystifying law.
3. His practice as an advocate looks linkages between law and its impact- traditional lawyering is only related with winning some case but socio-legal lawyering involves close security of the impact a particular action will have on the society as a whole.
4. His activities as an advocate are not restricted to the court rooms only- his lawyering strategically uses different forums and unconventional way to meet the justice.
5. Asim uses Media advocacy for the larger social change through successful stories from the court rooms-Media Advocacy is a very important component of socio-legal lawyering which Asim is using to bring up the issues on the public agenda.
6. His use of legal power is inclusive of many things- He thinks that social justice practice does not operate in isolation. It constantly strives to involve various stake holders like the law college students, Social work students, new lawyers, media students, Police, victims of crime and witnesses also.
7. He says it is a myth if someone says that human rights practice is restricted to High Courts and Supreme Courts. Even lower judiciary can be used for human right justice lawyering. It is not just about filing Public Interest Litigation (PIL) but it is about getting justice with “Rights based perspective”. He thinks that such approach also is to changes the attitude of the judiciary towards understanding cases from a human rights angle.
8. Asim says Socio-legal lawyering is not about winning or loosing the case but it is about understanding a cause and extending our support by fighting for the cause. Sometimes loosing a case can have a greater impact which can be of strategically very relevant and important. But in this whole process the Honesty is the most important virtue which should reflect from every action.
The Person
Born and brought up in rural Maharashtra, Asim grew up in a family that was deeply engaged in social change. His grandfather worked with Vinoba Bhave in the Bhoodan Movement, and his father- whom he cites as his greatest influence- is a Gandhian social worker who set up an education NGO called the Sahayog Trust. Asim trained as a journalist in addition to studying law, and began his career by working to provide free legal aid to the undertrial prisoners of Yerawada Central Prison. He also provided free legal aid for sex workers who were being victimized under the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act, and then set up the volunteer and student driven legal wing of the Sahayog Trust – called Human Rights and Law Defenders (HRLD).
Every year, HRLD provides free legal aid to about 500 cases, in addition to working on witness protection and victim support outside the courts. Asim has been a Majlis fellow for his work with victims of sexual violence. During the last seven years in Indian courts of law, Asim has been deeply disturbed by the way in which witnesses were treated, and the culture of intimidation and disrespect. In one incident, which received much media coverage, Asim rescued an illegally detained horse- who was indicted for carrying alcohol and was tethered outside a police station without food or water.
Asim also has a history of creating new precedents for more supportive ways of handling procedures. When he realized that rape victims were being detained in hospitals for checkups for up to 15 days after the crime (the current law only stipulates that the rape victim needs to be taken to a hospital for a physical, gynecological and psychological check-up within 24 hours, not how long these check ups should takes\ once she is in the hospital), Asim filed a petition in the high court to mandate that the check-up should be completed in a limited amount of time.
[1] Although India’s highest legal authority- the Supreme Court- recognized this in 2003 [in the case of National Human Rights Commission v. State of Gujarat, the Supreme Court regretted that "no law has yet been enacted, not even a scheme has been framed by the Union of India or by the State Government for giving protection to the witnesses."], the discussions have so far remained at the level of rhetoric and theoretical debates.
- Asim Sarode can be contacted at- # 302 Anil Housing Society, Opp.Kamala Nehru Park, Near Bhandarkar Road, Pune-411004, Maharashtra, INDIA
- CALL him on- +91-20-25667555 or +91 9850821117
- e mail him at- asim.human@gmail.com OR asimsarode@rediffmail.com
