Justice has been done, the fast-track court’s verdict welcomed, and even Sushilkumar Shinde, the union home minister, said just as much without mouthing symptoms of his recurrent foot-in-mouth disease.

So as the courtroom at the fast-track court in Saket district courts complex in south Delhi clears of the media presence, police bandobast and unusually high (pitched) attention, it is time to ensure it stays off the radar. Not with unexceptional cases of violence against, rape and murder of nondescript women, but completely switched off.

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Handing out the death sentence to Mukesh (26), Akshay Thakur (28), Pawan Gupta (19) and Vinay Sharma (20) for raping and battering a 23-year-old student in New Delhi on December 16 last year, which led to her death two weeks later, the judge, Yogesh Khanna observed, “(The) court cannot turn a blind eye to such a gruesome act…. When crime against women is rising day-to-day, at this point in time (the) court cannot keep its eye shut.”

No, the court cannot. But the courts only have a secondary role to play in this – after a crime takes place. It’s the characters playing the primary role here – the police, and their political masters – who have to change tack. They have to stop keeping their eyes wide shut.

Shinde, who, as the country’s home minister, is the overall boss of the police forces – okay, indirectly in most cases if one gets entangled in the police-is-state-subject debate – is justifiably elated today, notwithstanding the gangrape trial defence lawyer’s carp that Shinde’s statements “provoked” the court to convict the four men. Last heard, the gushing home minister said, "I welcome this decision (death sentence for the four rapists). The judge has also said it was the rarest of rare cases. We had worked hard on this case and presented the evidence. The verdict will send out a strong message.”

No sir, verdicts do not send strong messages to anyone. Everyone knows death sentence or life imprisonment is the punishment for murder, but that doesn’t stop people from killing others – as seen recently in Muzaffarnagar in western Uttar Pradesh, where communal riots played out at a time the home minister was visiting his home state, Maharashtra.

It’s the police and the political class that send out “strong messages” – the former by keeping its boots planted on the ground and nipping trouble in the bud, and the latter by empowering and enforcing, indeed employing more of those boots.
 
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The December 16 gangrape victim, Shinde said, “has got justice, her family has got justice. It's an example for criminals.”

One hopes so, but in India hope is dashed more often, and more easily, every day than most everyday things.

So besides criminals – as also their would-be and wannabe variants – the people who also need to learn a lesson or two from this “strong message” are the police – the likes of whom refuse to lodge an FIR – and their political masters – especially the sort who water-canon rape protestors and come up with outrageous dented-and-painted or out-by-night-women-deserve-it remarks.

Let’s look at a world that’s real, Mr Shinde: criminals won’t stop unless you make them stop. Just as a verdict or three is not a deterrent unto itself, deterrence by law enforcers is.