I have lately been glued to my laptop watching videos from “YouTube”. Especially, the episodes of NBC’s “To catch a predator”. It did not long to understand what this program was about. It was about catching sex predators who would chat with underage teens, boys and girls who would chat and express their lure and lust. The teens who actually chat are undercover investigators. Basically they throw the bait and catch the fish and call them “The Predator” and in fact have them arrested. I feel this is a sick way in which the TV channel has people arrested for increasing their viewers rating, more because, the teens voluntarily involve and start chats with men who might not have even been interested and tempt them. That does not hide the fact that these chats are possible and adults having such an inappropriate conversation with teens below 18 years of age is a crime by law. A few of them include criminals, school teachers, marines, doctors and even married men etc. A lot of them don’t seem to even know that just having such chats or conversations count as a crime and they can be arrested for that. Also among the caught are predators of age 20 chatting with 16 year old girls, the age difference is not a lot. He is just out of his teens, after all how mature can you expect him to be. What is funny is it is not a crime if they were two years older (if the girl was 18 and the guy was 22). But, for those few moments of stupidity and unthoughtfulness he would go to jail for the next few years. Although, when I see people in their middle or older ages do this, I feel they should be dealt with severely.
Also I have recently seen a few sting operations to catch a car thief. They leave a car with keys in it and invite loiterers to be their prey. Surprisingly quite a few fall for this and get busted when they try to flee and are involved in a hot pursuit for a stolen vehicle. I had a different impression until a few days back about a stolen car pursuit. I didn’t think it involved the element of temptation. Other sting operations I have watched on TV involved police women dressed up like hookers and inviting strangers for prostitution. Is it ok to do this? Seems like it is, although in India the laws are different and people who induce the crime are more punishable rather than those involved in the crime. Something else that is interesting is that there are a few cases in which though the suspects don’t have complete concrete evidence that the suspects committed the crime, they are sent to jail because the jury thinks they should. And according to double jeopardy, the same case can’t be tried more than twice, which means that if criminals are tried twice and proven not guilty and even if they confess after that, they are still free. Quite different from what the Indian constitution states and also a well known concept about the Indian constitution is that a suspect need not be necessarily punished but an innocent person shouldn’t be punished for a crime he never did. Wherever be it, whatever be it, the bottom-line seems clear - To bring justice to light. Just the laws and approaches seem different. Caught and confused among these laws, here I blog.
