The supreme court had been prescient about the ghastly gang rape of December 16. In their order of April 27 last year against PIL 265 of 2011, a three-judge bench headed no less by the then chief justice had ordered all states of the union to remove black films on all vehicles, citing at the very outset that these are the principal cause of such ghastly crimes.

Then the thriving mafia around these films struck back and tried to clog the court system with requests for being impleaded. But the court would have none of that and on August 3, it reasserted the April order.

But the mafia remained unmoved. They had ample help from the police, a fact not lost on Avishek Goenka, the tireless petitioner against black films.

The young man from Kolkata has remained dogged in his mission. As if prescient of the gangrape victim’s imminent plight, three weeks before the fateful night of December 16,  he had already filed a contempt petition in the supreme court under Article 129 of the constitution!

If followed through its logical conclusion directors-general of police and commissioners of police as in the instant case of New Delhi are liable to face contempt because of inaction. They, in fact, are the ones mandated under the SC order of April 27, 2012 to ensure the removal of black film on all vehicles in their jurisdiction save for an exempted list of VIPs.

Unfortunately for Goenka, the victim who is no more and a million young women who board killer buses like the Yadav Transport vehicle every day, the contempt petition (attached below) hasn’t yet been heard because of the apex court’s preoccupation.

No sooner this is done, and even one head of police loses his or her job, every vehicle in India would turn compliant.

I recently had a long conversation with the victim’s friend who too was beaten in that bus. He was absolutely clear that only because the bus’s owners were in a weekly truck with law enforcement agencies that it could carry on plying on Delhi’s roads with impunity.

The young man, badly hurt himself as borne out by television pictures, asked me why removal of black films on public transport and non-VIP vehicles isn’t a fit case for the consideration of the JS Verma committee.

He wondered why the Verma committee itself doesn’t recommend contempt of court proceedings against Delhi police.

Let us hope courageous citizens like this man and Avishek Goenka can join together and puncture the police-mafia economics of buses plying in contempt of supreme court orders.