Unafraid of taking a stand, the top judge looks set to uphold justice

 “Minister of Law and Justice Kiren Rijiju wants to dump the Collegium system of choosing judges for the High Courts and the Supreme Court. CJI Chandrachud is not going to allow that to happen. The people should keep their fingers crossed. If the political executive is given a free hand to select judges for the superior courts, we will soon get only ‘committed judges’ on the pattern of ‘committed bureaucrats’.”

Thank the Almighty for the gift of the new Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud, who speaks up when necessary and is not afraid of taking a stand. If columnists and writers were morally obliged to ‘recuse’ themselves from writing on persons with a biased slant, I would have had to ‘recuse’ myself on commenting about Justice Chandrachud. The reason is that his father, former CJI YV Chandrachud, was my teacher at Government Law College in 1948-50. If the political executive is given a free hand to select judges for superior courts, we will get only ‘committed judges’ on the pattern of ‘committed bureaucrats’.

Later, when I joined the Indian Police Service and was appointed the SP of Pune City (I was the last Superintendent to head that city’s police as it was upgraded to a Police Commissionerate while I was still its SP in 1965). His father was the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court. Every month, he visited Pune, and the first stop he made on his way from the railway station to his place of residence in the city was the Superintendent’s office to touch base with an old pupil. Sometimes, Justice Jal Vimadalal, another of my law college teachers, would accompany him. During such visits, my office would literally stop functioning as the entire staff would leave their desk to get a glimpse of these eminent judges! My own stock rose proportionately to the number of times the judges peeped into my room. This is the principal reason why I feel elated when my friends spare kind words of praise for some of the orders passed by the CJI’s Bench, since he assumed the highest office in the nation’s judiciary.

The most glaring injustice the present CJI has taken upon himself to tackle is the recent trend of the judiciary at almost all levels to reverse, in practice, Justice VR Krishna Iyer’s dictum of ‘bail not jail’! Amendments to the UAPA Act make it almost impossible for subordinate judges to release those accused of terrorist acts on bail, but even when the offences with which they are charged do not disclose an act of terrorism, the lower judiciary is afraid to use its powers to correct basic wrongs, thereby ensuring that those who have not been convicted, not even faced a trial, languish in jails for years together without any hope of defending themselves.

Justice DY Chandrachud, in a public speech he delivered recently, commented that judicial officers at the district and taluka levels are afraid of making mistakes and prefer to go along with the NIA, the ED and other Central investigation agencies who tailor their investigations to keep inconvenient people in jail despite lack of any evidence necessary to convict them. The process becomes the punishment in such cases. After years of languishing in jail, these accused will, in all probability, go free. But at what cost?

Prof Anand Teltumbde, arrested two years ago in the Bhima Koregaon case, remarked on his release on bail recently that he had to spend two years of his life in prison, though he had committed no crime! Rona Wilson, another activist imprisoned without trial for years in that same case, alleges that the evidence downloaded by the NIA from his computer was planted there. He got the matter examined by experts in the US. The expert opined that it was the neatest plant that he had discovered in his long career in this field!

With the disclosure that a spy software of Israeli origin called Pegasus had been purchased by our Intelligence agencies a few years ago, the needle of suspicion points at the Central Intelligence agencies and those who pull the puppet strings! Since no attempts to expedite the trial have been put in motion, it can safely be concluded that the plan is to ensure that persons who are inconvenient, but who the agencies find difficult to get convicted, will spend jail time for years without trial. This is against all canons of jurisprudence. The judiciary must oppose such cynical usage of criminal laws and procedures in the interest of equity and good conscience.

Home Minister Amit Shah recently stated in an election speech in Gujarat that the BJP had taught anti-social elements in his state a lesson they would never forget. He was referring to the anti-Muslim riots after the burning alive of 59 karsevaks on a train in Godhra in 2002. It was the most damaging statement by a BJP leader. The 2002 mayhem had shocked the conscience of the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee — of Shah’s own political party. Yet, an upright IPS officer, RB Sreekumar, was thrown in prison, along with activist Teesta Setalvad. He languished there for many months till the judiciary finally found its voice and released him on bail. What major crime did Teesta and Sreekumar commit by pursuing the perpetrators of inhuman rapes and killings?

Sreekumar was penalized for simply obeying the law and the Constitution. Most colleagues played safe and avoided the problem altogether. Some decided to collaborate with the ‘teachers of lessons’. If the judiciary had not changed course and decided to do its constitutional duty to implement the laws impartially, Sreekumar would have had to cool his heels in a cell for some more months, maybe even years.

After Shah’s statement, it is clear that by targeting Teesta and Sreekumar, the State was pursuing the victims rather than the culprits. It is the duty of the judiciary to correct such wrongs.

Minister of Law and Justice Kiren Rijiju wants to dump the Collegium system of choosing judges for the High Courts and the Supreme Court. CJI Chandrachud is not going to allow that to happen. The people should keep their fingers crossed. If the political executive is given a free hand to select judges for the superior courts, we will soon get only ‘committed judges’ on the pattern of ‘committed bureaucrats’.

Our jails are overcrowded. The majority of those in jail are awaiting trial. In Mumbai, there are many undertrials who have travelled on trains without purchasing tickets! They have no way of arranging for bail as they are mostly homeless and jobless. Successive governments have not been able to reduce their number. But surely, no government should fill jails with those who do not subscribe to its ideology.

(The author is a former Governor and a retired IPS officer)