A day after the sub divisional magistrate was assaulted merely for doing his duty on the national highway by security forces, a poignantly appropriate cartoon appeared in a local daily showing the badly bruised magistrate on a hospital bed with a local Kashmir looking at him and asking: “A magisterial inquiry, eh?” The cartoon is an accurate depiction of the miseries and sufferings faced by the people of Kashmir since the last three decades of turmoil which has perhaps not breached the outrage levels of babus in the Valley who enjoy the seats of power and continue to overlook what their people are undergoing. Since the armed insurgency erupted in Kashmir, hundreds of magisterial inquiries have been ordered by the state government with the promise of bringing their perpetrators to justice. Be it the cold blooded killings of civilians by security forces, the manhandling and assault on protesters or the wanton abuses committed in the name of the national interest, the state government has wasted no time in announcing probes after probes. But very little has been done to ensure that these probes are taken to logical conclusion. The incident that took place with the magistrate on the national highway is indeed condemnable and the perpetrators need to be brought to book. But if an incident of such nature can take place with a senior government officer, one can only imagine what the people of Kashmir have been going through. If only the mechanisms to bring guilty to justice had been put in place by the state government, and its officers who are mandated to carry out these probes had shown the same urgency to ensure justice, perhaps the highway incident would have never taken place. But because the state machinery has evolved into such a monster in the last three decades of turmoil, justice has remained evasive as ever. The state monster eats away at anything and everything rightful and it ensures that massive obstacles are put in the path of those who demand justice. These obstacles come in various shapes and forms, like a magisterial inquiry. While the police has registered a case of wrongful restraint and assault against the guilty in the highway assault case, its is unlikely that justice will ever be delivered. The case will add to the gory statistics of violence unleashed by the state machinery on ordinary and innocent people while justice will continue to remain evasive!