In the crumbling final days of the Roman Empire, justice too was for sale. Rome, once a city built on laws and moral clarity, was now a marketplace of corruption where gold could wash away any sin. If you had the wealth, your crime could be swept aside, forgotten beneath the sound of clinking coins.
It was a time when power was measured not by principles but by pocketbooks when the scales of justice tipped heavily in favour of those who could afford to grease their hinges.
Today, many centuries later, in a far-off land where the shadow of wealth casts a long and twisted darkness over everything, we find ourselves revisiting the same painful decay. A tragic accident occurs, and lives are irreversibly lost on the roads of Karachi. Grief should be met with justice, not a handshake and the transfer of banknotes. But, as this tale unfolds, it becomes clear that the most valuable currency is not truth, not fairness, but the colour of cash.
In the most recent chapter of this sorrowful saga, we learn that the heirs of two innocent souls, tragically lost in a horrifying crash, submitted an affidavit to the court, pardoning the one whose criminal recklessness behind the wheel of a luxury vehicle claimed the lives of their loved ones. With this affidavit, justice once again slips away, concealed behind the familiar veil of wealth and privilege.
But as is often the case, the words conceal more than they reveal. What really motivates this sudden flood of grace? If you peer behind the veil, the shadow of financial desperation is visible in every corner. The victims’ family, crippled by loss, is boxed into a corner where money, not retribution, must be their solace.
The society we live in today is one where the threads of wealth bind everything together. A society where money doesn’t just talk -- it dictates. Wealthy perpetrators of crimes, be they unintentional or otherwise, walk free while the poor are condemned to bargain with their dead. It is a grotesque marketplace where grief, tragedy, and even the right to seek justice become commodities to be auctioned, often with the highest bidder walking away unscathed.
When we say money buys everything, we must ask: why should justice be any different? We have normalized it, haven’t we? We look at cases like this, shake our heads, and then offer our own justifications. “Wouldn’t you do the same if you were poor?” we ask, as if poverty justifies exploitation. "If she has the money, why shouldn't she use it?" some argue, turning the conversation into a cold calculus. The victims are boxed into a cruel dilemma: accept money to soften the unbearable burden of their poverty or pursue justice they can't afford. There is no right choice when both paths lead to suffering.
In a society where arguments are made to normalize lawlessness, decay isn't a mere threat; it's an inevitability. Today, the wealthier you are, the more you control not only your own fate but the fates of others as well. The powerless have no recourse but to bow under the weight of their financial desperation. This isn't merely an issue of law. It is the moral decay of a society where every relationship, even the one between victim and perpetrator, is transactional.
And we often hear the term ‘elite’ used to describe those who exploit their privilege to escape justice. But we must pause and reconsider this term. The word ‘elite’, derived from the Latin ‘eligere’, meaning ‘to choose’, once referred to individuals selected for their excellence -- a group marked by distinction, achievement, and merit.
However, the people who routinely evade justice in Pakistan, far from being exceptional, are simply circumstantially advantaged within the confines of a particular geography. They are not distinguished by greatness or virtue, but by their ability to manipulate systems and laws in their favour. Even their wealth, which grants them this impunity, is meagre in comparison to the wealth of individuals in countries where rule of law prevails, and where affluence does little to shield one from true accountability.
In truth, they do not represent the elite in any meaningful sense; rather, they embody a mediocrity that thrives on exploitation, their privilege a mere accident of circumstance. By continuing to call them ‘elite’, we mistakenly attribute to them a dignity and distinction they do not deserve.
Justice, in its purest form, is about balance. It is about ensuring that wrongdoing is met with consequences and that the scales, even in tragedy, tip towards righteousness. But in this land, balance is not achieved through fairness. Instead, it is achieved through the weighted sack of money that can make all wrongs disappear. When justice becomes a purchasable commodity, only the wealthy can afford its benefits. Justice, closure, and retribution are no longer rights but luxuries.
In Pakistan, we are seeing a society where wealth doesn’t just shield you from accountability -- it allows you to rewrite the very narrative of guilt and innocence. The suspect in this case stands accused of more than just negligence; illicit substances were found in her system, and lives were lost as a result of her reckless actions.
Yet here we are. The story is now one of pity, of forgiveness by the grieving, and of a legal system that allows her to walk free with little more than a monetary transaction. For those who are poor, the same options never appear. Forgiveness, in these cases, isn't noble -- it's necessary because without it, there is only destitution.
And here is the bitter truth: the poor cannot afford to grieve. Grief is a luxury, a process that requires time, space, and financial stability. In a world where money rules, they must trade their grief for survival. There is no justice for the impoverished, no righteous fury that can be pursued in a court of law. Their vengeance must be turned inward, into silence, and their hearts are left to rot in the quiet despair of lives unlived.
This is not a failure of law alone; it is a failure of society. When a country, a community, a people normalize this kind of systemic injustice, when they explain it away with the cold logic of financial necessity, they are complicit in the erosion of everything just and good. A place where lawlessness is justified by the greed that drives it is a place where decay is the only possible outcome.
There is no hope for reform in a system where justice can be bought. There is no comfort for the poor when their pain is commodified. And there is no future for a society that lets its moral compass be sold to the highest bidder. What remains is only a hollow shell, a society rotting from the inside out, as justice, along with all other virtues, is bartered away for a price.
The writer is an entrepreneur living in the United States and the United Kingdom. He can be reached at: saraya.yale.edu