Watching ‘No One Killed Jessica’ is not like viewing any other film. One, it deals with too recent a history. Secondly it leaves one kind of confused. Whose tale is it? The fighter Sabrina or the foul mouthed TV anchor? Does it convey the victory of truth over evil or the result of a master con game played by a rising media star out to prove a point to her peers? Whatever, the film left one with a niggling thought.

If there could be a boiling over of public anger and disapproval of the state’s conduct in Jessica’s murder case compelling the state to act and the higher courts to reverse the shocking verdict of acquittal from a lower court, then what is it that prevents the same from happening in the case of a systematic murder of Yamuna, the life-line river of the nation’s capital city?

It is no secret that the river Yamuna is in deep trouble and sadly it is on account of the acts of omission and commissions of the agencies of the state themselves who have been gnawing onto the river’s vitals since 1980s. It is also a fact that the media has been bringing - although in fits and starts - these disturbing facts to the public notice. And yet, never has there been a similar outpour of public anguish and anger when say the Akshardham happened in the river bed; the Metro repeatedly occupied parts of it; the DDA planned and bulldozed its way to the construction of Games Village in the river bed; Delhi Transco having been caught in the act feigned ignorance of the rules to the Yamuna Standing Committee (YSC) and got away with it and now when the DTC is using  subterfuge of a temporary parking space for the duration of CWG 2010 to  claim permanent occupancy over 61 acres of the flood plain for a bus depot, trying to justify it on the grounds of an overwhelming ‘need’. No matter if the act is a brazen violation of the river bed’s sanctity and is in teeth of Lt Governor’s 2007 moratorium on any new structure in the river bed and the statutory zonal plan for Zone O (river) making it a complete mockery of the laws of the land. But a mockery of laws and an ill intent that the DTC could not hide from the Delhi Urban Art Commission (DUAC) which after an inspection on November 3, 2010 directed the DDA to demolish the said illegal structure standing in the river bed. Most recently the DDA already fiddling for over two months on acting on the DUAC’s directions to demolish, has been approached by the shameless and lawless DTC with a request for a post facto change in land use of the said site in the river bed from its existing ‘green’.         

The river has today no water of its own and it is so loaded with the city’s sewage that for the major part of the year it is revolting to the senses to even stand on its banks.  There is no life in it and its flood plains continue to be coveted by the ‘developmental’ agencies. Illegal sand mining from its bed is rampant and come festive season, it gets over-loaded with the festivity’s left overs.

So it is a moot point as to what is still left to further befall the river before a similarly spirited TV anchor; equally charged group of young college students; obviously disturbed professionals; retired persons outraged with a sense of disbelief; indignant home-makers and the like would be agitated enough as a group to come out onto the streets and loudly proclaim that enough is enough. We want our river back and the culprits to be brought to the book. 

Sadly what has become of the state and not just in India it seems, that to act correctly, it needs, each and every time, the prod of a public outcry?