'Not in vain' is not enough: honouring Babita Deokaran with more than justice

IT IS TOO easy - too convenient - to say that Babita Deokaran's death was "not in vain".

- 

As if the machinery of justice, once set in motion, could somehow balance the scales of a life extinguished. As if the arrest of masterminds or the exposure of corruption could ever compensate for the silencing of a daughter, a mother, a colleague, a patriot.

Deokaran was not a symbol. She was a person. And in the wake of the Special Investigating Unit's (SIU) latest report, which lays bare the systemic rot she dared to confront, we must resist the temptation to reduce her to a martyr whose sacrifice was necessary. It was not. It was intolerable.