I knew nothing about her before entering this room.
I arrived when the hearing began. Standing in the back of the court in this big room full of lawyers, in part, which does not escape me is that the junior judge "had eyes imbued with a genuine sadness as a young lawyer in front of me which at times turned as if to look away. There were very few women but they all seemed highly relevant.
I passed the courtroom where the atmosphere strange and unusual for an Indian court drew me like a magnet. The audience listened silently. Only a child of three or four years, playing with a piece of paper being dragged on the floor, made a slight noise continuously. He was with his mom at the back of the room in the dock with six others, adults and youth. Their faces were serious. They seem united by a bond that barbarous foreign law had engraved in their blood. Mom was worried about the noise made by his son and looked at me frightened. I was leaning on the fence of their prison opened. I smiled sweetly to make him understand that this does not bother anyone. It was like a stormy day, when the light pierces the dark sky for a moment. On his face marked with a seal pointed a terrifying calm smile briefly interrupting the voices of his conscience accusing insomniac!
"We Live With That bread, bread With That We Die" sings Lata Mangeshkar
The witness a 40 year old man had just finished testifying in these words:
- No! This is the first time I witness it, police do not ask me to testify during the investigation!
These are thethrough this adversarial process where lawyers have an obligation to provide any evidence of the offense, to search for witnesses, to conduct a real investigation with the help of families often poor.
I'm finally in history to the present and the bailiff called to the bar another witness, a beautiful 60 year old woman dressed in her sari, her head covered with a veil. She meets a lawyer for a sure voice and described in detail in Marathi that she had seen that day. The judge resumed his dictation to the clerk after each statement in plain English, simple and precise as if to make things easier.
The senior judge Hiwirete pounds each word
- I went to Gina's house and the door was closed from the outside, I called and nobody answered.
- yet I knew Gina would be home.
I wish I had been there at the beginning of the hearing about the indictment and understood the reason for such silence in the room. The woman described the landscape in which she walks to meet his friend. I escape in his remarks in Marathi through fields and rivers with only guides the music round of the language. I guess this village and its colorful temples, schools resonant voice of children, and some remote farms where old houses in terracotta long, low shadow protect their few cows and goats emaciated black and white.
But what I feel is that suddenly the silence is made heavier and what my eyes see clearly is that everyone watching me. The village has disappeared from my thoughts because at this precise moment is to question me curiously. I decided inconscienmment to the cross roads to go see for myself the scene of the crime by the transmutation and the judge decided otherwise. he spoke to me:
- You are the French lawyer? Why have you been left standing? Come if you want to understand how it works do not stay at the bottom! Sit alongside lawyers for the prosecution and defense. Come! I felt upon me the light heavyweight of my colleagues that I was not trying to decipher.
He left me no choice and I had the unpleasant feeling of having disturbed by my presence too long trial that I was not and had to be neither hero nor victim nor the accused. I moved to sit in a place freed by a young lawyer without going so far as telling me that the magistrate who could never be mine.
- Thank you your honor! Am I just said, sitting down quickly.
The woman continued:
- On reaching the village I asked the neighbors who told me that Gina was in the house with members of his in-laws.
- I left the house to Gina and the door was open. I entered and saw his body lying in a pool of blood
- On several occasions she told me that her husband and her in-laws harassed her by requiring her to asks his parents 4 lakh rupees (400,000 rupees or 6,450 euros). She had been burned several times to take her to run. But his parents could not pay the dowry.
- Gina was tired of cruelty that suffered and she eventually committed suicide.
- Have you testified to that before the police asked the lawyer?
- No! This is the first time I witness it, police do not ask me to testify during the investigation! replied the witness.
The trial continues Saturday from 11 am.
In the meantime, I think of dowry still present and strong despite its prohibition by law. I look at the junior judge "with sad eyes, I think of N ... M, XY, Z.
I think of the parents of deaf ears broken by the sounds of tradition, their blind eyes obscured by the brilliance of their own image. I see them looking miserable and lost only one night in the millennium long road to do with the heart what the eyes can see!
I think this young woman party to faraway lands. I know a little more of her now and I see her beautiful and rich in many things.
Leaving the court, I drew another life!
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