The human rights activists have rightly been confounded and disheartened at Supreme Courts verdict in Mukhtaran Mais case according to which only one culprit has been accorded life imprisonment and others have been acquitted. In other words, the apex court has indirectly declared the rapists as innocent ones. Our judicial system has been suffering from years old malaise and the system of investigation by police has so big holes that would even swallow Titanic. Women are helpless pawns in the hands of men in our male dominant society. It is bewildering that more than 200 persons saw with their naked eyes the poor lady being raped and paraded naked on the orders of a village court. After an infuriating delay of nine long years only one person has been punished and that too by life imprisonment. Actually 14 persons raped the woman and she rightly says that 13 out of them can now come to her home and injure her after the verdict of the apex court. She has aptly said that she has lost confidence in courts and has left her case to the court of Allah. By this verdict the Supreme Court has legalized the parallel court system to the detriment of already flawed legal system of our country. By punishing one of the accused, the apex court has accepted that Mukhtaran Mai was after all raped. A simple question arises: Is the decision of the court in consonance with the Islamic laws? If all is not bad with our legal system, all is not well with it. Mukhrtaran Mais case is a glaring example of that. MUBUSHAR ALI SULEHRIA, Wah Cantt, April 24.