Supreme Court lays emphasis on protecting personal liberty

By Dilip -

NB: It is good to know that our Supreme Court is watchful regarding the rights of individual citizens to protection against state harassment. Here are some cases that may not have come to their Lordships' notice, including one of an 83 year old activist who has been jailed under the draconian provisions of the UAPA and asked to wait 20 days for a response to a request for a straw to imbibe liquids, as he suffers from Parkinson's disease. I append below some examples of the threat to personal liberty, both from the justice system as well as a variety of public speech that goes by the name journalism, but more closely resembles the medieval Inquisition. 

These instances are well-known in civil society. If the justice system can do nothing about them we can only surmise that Indian justice is now at the service of the ruling establishment. The persons and groups at the apex of this ruling establishment enjoy the mantle of legitimacy conferred by India's democratic institutions at the same time as they proceed rapidly to destroy those same institutions. The fact that they conspire in broad daylight is an Orwellian nightmare for all of us, regardless of when we wake up. DS

Justice Chandrachud of the Supreme Court lays emphasis on protecting personal liberty

The SC's vacation Bench under Justice Chandrachud granted bail to TV anchor Goswami; whilst emphasising the need to protect personal liberty. The court said, “If the State targets individuals, they must realise that the apex court is there to protect them.” It also asked the high courts to not fall short of exercising constitutional duties in protecting “personal liberty”. “We must send a message across to the high court today that please, exercise your jurisdiction to uphold personal liberty,” said the vacation bench of the Supreme Court....

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/best-way-to-spend-birthday-says-justice-chandrachud-who-heard-arnab-goswami-s-bail-plea/story-a4dkkGiNPXE3QlxCAXe7QO.html

Colin Gonsalves: Refusal of bail to Sudha Bharadwaj is based on inadmissible evidence

Pratap Bhanu Mehta: The loneliness of Varavara Rao, Anand Teltumbde, Sudha Bharadwaj tells a disquieting tale

Samjhauta Express blast case verdict: ‘Who will answer for death of my five children?’

Jailed and Harassed Former IGP Darapuri, 76, Shares His Ordeal

Prem Shankar Jha: The Shadow of Haren Pandya’s Case Lies Long Over Justice Arun Mishra

VINOD K JOSE - Narendra Modi’s shadow lies all over the Haren Pandya case

Sanjiv Bhatt Sentenced To Life Imprisonment In 30 Year Old Custodial Death Case // Message from Shweta Bhatt

Tavleen Singh on government ministers suddenly defending press freedom / Arfa Khanum Sherwani: I’m a Journalist, That’s Why I Don’t Stand With Arnab Goswami

Nikhila Henry - Ex CJI Gogoi's RS Nomination Calls All His Judgments Into Question, Says Legal Expert

‘This episode is going to haunt SC in years to come’: Justice AP Shah on CJI sexual harassment case

Hathras gang-rape and murder / Protests erupt across country as political leaders, activists add voice to chorus of condemnation

Shalini Langer: Give me Rhea’s fortitude any day // Tavleen Singh: Rhea and her family have been sacrificed at the altar of lynch mob journalism

Ramachandra Guha: Supreme Court must reflect on its calling as defined by the Constitution - and the direction it is taking

First Among Equals? // Laws, legal system totally geared in favour of rich and powerful: Justice Deepak Gupta

Sabotage of Indian criminal justice continues unchecked: Aseemanand’s ‘disclosure’ missing from court

Express editorial on SC in-house inquiry: Not justice

Sameera Sood: Bollywood is the new JNU and Deepika Padukone the new opium of distraction / Tavleen Singh: ‘Reporters’ were so drunk with their power to smear that they failed to fulfill their primary role

VAKASHA SACHDEV: In Reply to Contempt Case, Bhushan Offers Detailed Critique of SC

Anil Nauriya - The Angst of August: Reading The Recent Political History of India // Express editorial: Prashant Bhushan judgement - the Supreme Court has diminished itself

Facing Contempt Case, Prashant Bhushan Says Sorry for Just One Remark; 'Why No Helmet by CJI?'

Confrontation in Supreme Court Of India bodes ill // Prashant Bhushan on the CJI’s ‘Extraordinary Interest’ in a Matter Directly Concerning Himself

Bharat Bhushan: A hanging in Dhaka, courtesy Delhi

CBI court raps Amit Shah for non-appearance in fake encounter case // Amit Shah all set to become BJP chief

Neelabh Mishra - Modi Sarkar, beware of tampering with the Constitution / Soli Sorabjee: What we need to guard / Arun Shourie: "What we are going towards is a pyramidal decentralised mafia state"

Julio Ribeiro - Burying Karkare: I cannot let these forces go unchallenged

Terrifying implications of the SC's Staines Judgement

The Supreme Court, Gandhi and the RSS

The BJP and Justice, Chapter 2

Vyapam

Vanzara

Mohan Bhagwat

BHARAT BHUSHAN - Narendra Modi's Republic of fear ...

Public Appeal - Resist degradation of Indian criminal justice system

The emperor's masks: 'apolitical' RSS calls the shots in Modi sarkar         

List of serious criminal charges against new UP CM Yogi Adityanath

Julio Ribeiro - Burying Karkare: I cannot let these forces go unchallenged

Public Appeal - Resist degradation of Indian criminal justice system

Bombay HC Grants Bail To 3 Men, Saying They Were 'Provoked To Kill In The Name Of Religion'

India: End Bias in Prosecuting Delhi Violence

Betwa Sharma: UP Cop Booked Yogi Adityanath Under NSA, Spent 20 Years In The Wilderness

Re-investigate Judge Loya’s death: Sharad Pawar // सीबीआई जज की मौत को लेकर उठे सवाल

Apoorva Mandhani: Judge Loya's Confidants Died Mysterious Deaths

Investigate Death Of Judge Who Was Hearing Sohrabuddin Sheikh Case: Justice AP Shah

Arun Shourie On Why The SC Must Enquire Into Loya’s Death, And Erosion of Institutions

सीबीआई जज की मौत को लेकर उठे सवाल

‘No lawyers, no apology, no fine, no waste of space,’ Kunal Kamra tweets to SC judges

Popular posts from this blog

Third degree torture used on Maruti workers: Rights body

By Dilip -
The People’s Union for Democratic Rights on Tuesday alleged that third degree torture methods were used by the Gurgaon Criminal Investigation Agency while interrogating workers of Maruti Suzuki India Limited’s Manesar plant who are accused of involvement in the killing of an HR manager and the violent attack at the plant on July 18. The PUDR alleged that the Gurgaon CIA investigation “did not seem” to be directed at solving the crime or probing the involvement of the arrested workers in the incidents and crimes recorded in the FIR but instead was based on their involvement in trade union activities. Grave doubts  “The use of third degree torture in police custody, and the securing of arrestees’ signatures on blank papers by the police, gives rise to grave doubts regarding the ability of such an investigation in effectively identifying or arresting those guilty. The police and the State seem keener to reassure Maruti Suzuki Ltd. and ensure that production continues,” the PUDR stat
Read more

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

By Dilip -
According to Murakami, “1Q84” is just an amplification of one of his most popular short stories,   which (in its English version) is five pages long. “Basically, it’s the same,” he told me. “A boy meets a girl. They have separated and are looking for each other. It’s a simple story. I just made it long.” One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert..." read the story: http://www.youmightfindyourself.com/post/22131227
Read more

The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

By Dilip -
Image
'Do you know', Napoleon once said to Fontanes, 'what astounds me most about the world?  The impotence of force to establish anything.  There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind.  In the end, the sword is always conquered by the mind' Conquerors, you see, are sometimes melancholy.  They have to pay some price for so much vainglory. But what a hundred years ago was true of the sword is no longer true today of the tank. Conquerors have made progress, and the dismal silence of places without intelligence has been established for years at a time in a lacerated Europe. At the time of the hideous wars of Flanders, Dutch painters could still perhaps paint the cockerels in their farmyards. The Hundred Years War has likewise been forgotten, and yet the prayers of Silesian mystics still linger in some hearts. But today, things have changed; the painter and the monk have been drafted - we are one with the world.  The mind has lost that regal certainty which a c
Read more

Rudyard Kipling: critical essay by George Orwell (1942)

By Dilip -
Mother of Cities to me, For I was born in her gate, Between the palms and the sea, Where the world-end steamers wait  Rudyard Kipling , To the City of Bombay "Few people who have criticized England from the inside have said bitterer things about her than this gutter patriot" : George Orwell IT WAS a pity that Mr. Eliot should be so much on the defensive in the long essay with which he prefaces this selection of Kipling's poetry, but it was not to be avoided, because before one can even speak about Kipling one has to clear away a legend that has been created by two sets of people who have not read his works. Kipling is in the peculiar position of having been a byword for fifty years. During five literary generations every enlightened person has despised him, and at the end of that time nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still there. Mr. Eliot never satisfactorily explains this fact, because in answering the shal
Read more

Satyagraha - An answer to modern nihilism

By Dilip -
NB: This is the text of my address to the Eighth East-West Inter-cultural Relations Conference held at Ramjas College, the University of Delhi, on March 17.  The details of the conference may be read here . A pdf file of the address is downloadable here  -  DS Satyagraha - An answer to modern nihilism Dilip Simeon Keynote address to the Eighth East-West Inter-cultural Relations Conference Ramjas College, March 17-18 2016 Zilu stopped for the night at Stone Gate. The gatekeeper said, Where are you from? Zilu said, From the household of Confucius. The gatekeeper said, The one who knows there’s nothing that can be done but keeps on trying?  -  from the Analects of Confucius (14:40) What is truth? asked jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer – Francis Bacon In fact it is more correct to say Truth is God than to say God is Truth – Mohandas Gandhi Introduction: The human being is the speaking animal, the discerner of good and evil. This featur
Read more

Three Versions of Judas: Jorge Luis Borges

By Dilip -
Image
In  Asia Minor or in Alexandria, in the second century of our faith (when Basilides was announcing that the cosmos was a rash and malevolent improvisation engineered by defective angels), Nils Runeberg might have directed, with a singular intellectual passion, one of the Gnostic monasteries. Dante would have destined him, perhaps, for a fiery sepulcher; his name might have augmented the catalogues of heresiarchs, between Satornibus and Carpocrates; some fragment of his preaching, embellished with invective, might have been preserved in the apocryphal Liber adversus omnes haereses  or might have perished when the firing of a monastic library consumed the last example of the  Syntagma . Instead, God assigned him to the twentieth century, and to the university city of Lund. There, in 1904, he published the first edition of  Kristus och Judas ; there, in 1909, his masterpiece  Dem hemlige Frälsaren  appeared. (Of this last mentioned work there exists a German version,  Der heimliche Heilan
Read more

Albert Camus's lecture 'The Human Crisis', New York, March 1946. 'No cause justifies the murder of innocents'

By Dilip -
The morning after a great historical crisis, you feel as sad and sick as after a heavy night. But there is no aspirin for historical hangovers .. The world is no longer divided into the just or unjust, but into masters and slaves. He who is right is he who enslaves.  Albert Camus     La crise de l'homme : THE HUMAN CRISIS   (Text read by Viggo Mortensen on March 28 2016)   Ladies and Gentlemen: when I was invited to give a series of lectures in the United States of America, I felt some doubt and hesitation. I am really not old enough to give lectures, and I am more at ease with the process of thinking than I am making categorical statements... since I don't feel I have any claim on what is generally called the truth. I shared this reservation and was very politely told that my personal opinion didn't matter. What mattered was that I'd be able to offer some facts about France so that my listeners could form their own opinions. It was then suggested that I might
Read more