"I will probably die" - Express Editorial on Stan Swamy // A Requiem for Father Stan Swamy: Justice of the Supreme Court (Retd) Madan Lokur

By Dilip -

"If justice perishes, human life on earth has lost its meaning" - Immanuel Kant

"Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest; now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law" - Albert Camus

The death of 84-year-old Father Stan Swamy in judicial custody Monday brings to an end a stark tale of injustice - one that has left the highest institutions of India’s justice system diminished. The Jesuit priest known for his advocacy of tribal rights in Jharkhand was arrested in October last year by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and charged with conspiracy in the Bhima Koregaon case. In the nearly nine months of his incarceration, till his death, the ailing activist came up - again and again - against the heavy hand of the state, an unresponsive judiciary and a broken prison system.

Think, for example, of the response when Swamy’s lawyers asked for a sipper and a straw for him, as Parkinson’s disease had made it impossible for him to drink water from a glass. The court adjourned the case for three weeks. Think, again, of the NIA’s opposition to the four bail pleas that Swamy filed, first in the special NIA court, and later in Bombay High Court. When Swamy asked the special court for bail on the grounds that an overcrowded prison would make him more vulnerable to the coronavirus, the NIA replied that “the accused under the garb of the current situation on account of the global pandemic Covid-19, is trying to take an undue benefit of the situation…” And yet, in all these months, the NIA did not seek a day’s custody to interrogate Swamy.

The Judiciary is the Defence of the Innocent. Or so we thought...

Father Stan Swamy dies in state custody at 84

Think, also, of his last appearance, via video-conference, before Bombay High Court on May 21. He described how his stint in Taloja jail had further enfeebled his ravaged body. “I will probably die here, very shortly if things go on as it is”, he said, asking to be allowed to return to Ranchi on medical bail. The Bombay High Court is yet to begin hearing the second of Swamy’s bail pleas filed on merit. Swamy’s case, of course, is not alone. Several others accused in the Bhima Koregaon case remain in prison, their trial not begun. From professor Hany Babu to Telugu poet Varavara Rao, several have struggled to find basic medical attention in derelict prisons amid a pandemic.

There are far too many instances of the judiciary’s lack of urgency, its reluctance to stand up for the liberty of citizens, faced with a state that does not flinch from using draconian laws like a blunt instrument against public intellectuals, students and dissenters. The recent Delhi HC order granting bail to Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and Asif Tanha could have been an exception in the way it raised the bar for the draconian UAPA to deny bail but, ironically, the apex court stayed that order and slapped the bench on the wrist for going on about the law.

It was for the courts to decide if Swamy was guilty of the grave charges he was held under. It was for the NIA to prove its case against him. However, in failing to protect the life of a fragile, ailing undertrial, and his right to due process, the state and the judiciary don’t just shrink the space for dissent and dissenters but also invite the damning verdict of history. If in Covid management the courts have been bright points of light, on this, there’s a dark blot.

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/editorials/father-stan-swamy-dies-uapa-nia-probe-bhima-koregaon-7390651/

Justice (Retd) Madan Lokur: Killing Him Softly With His Song: A Requiem for Father Stan Swamy   The entire episode leaves behind a feeling that Stan Swamy was virtually thrust a sentence of death without charges being framed against him and without a trial. I wonder if his soul will be able to rest in peace, but I hope it does. I suppose all that can be said is “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”....

https://thewire.in/law/killing-him-softly-with-his-song-a-requiem-for-father-stan-swamy

Waiting for medical bail, ailing 84-year-old passes away

Father Stan Swamy: I’d rather suffer, possibly die if things go on as it is

WANTED: Immediate Justice in the Bhima-Koregaon Conspiracy. By Cedric Prakash

Govt wants to cage women who speak against it, say Narwal & Kalita as they and Asif Tanha walk free / Delhi HC criticises 'wanton, frivolous use of UAPA by the State' / P.B. Mehta: Has the blackbox of UAPA finally been opened?

Pinjra Tod activist Natasha Narwal's father dies of Covid day before her bail hearing // That Monday will not come, Judge Sahib

Gujarati Poet Parul Khakkar Blames 'Naked King' for Corpses Floating in the Ganga

Avay Shukla: LEST WE FORGET

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

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

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

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

Naxalites should lay down their arms and challenge the ruling class to abide by the Constitution

The Supreme Court, Gandhi and the RSS

A whiff of evil

The Broken Middle - on the 30th anniversary of 1984

Bharat Bhushan: It suits the RSS to allow BJP to encourage defections from other parties


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