Dilip Simeon's blog

On 5 July, the Supreme Court  upheld  a Gujarat trial court’s verdict convicting 12 people accused of the murder of Haren Pandya, a former Gujarat home minister. Pandya, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader and a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, was killed in Ahmedabad on 26 March 2003. The  trial court’s conviction , on 25 June 2007, had been reversed by the Gujarat high court on 29 August 2011. In a scathing indictment of the investigation, the agencies responsible and the lower court, the high court had acquitted all the accused of the murder charges and termed the trial court’s verdict as “perverse and illegal.” The high court’s judgement noted that the investigation had been “botched up and blinkered” and “misdirected.” It also came down heavily on the investigating officers and recommended that the “concerned ought to be held accountable for their inaptitude resulting into injustice, huge harassment of many persons concerned and enormous waste of public resour...

“What do I tell my children when they ask me why the killers were not caught?” The medium-built under trial prisoner walked into the jailor’s room, where a saree-clad woman sat waiting patiently. She did not display any emotion on seeing him. The ice breaker was a traditional ‘Namaste’ offered by the under trial Asgar Ali. And the woman Jagruti Pandya, whose husband Ali is alleged to have killed, asked him to sit. Haren Pandya fell to bullets fired by an “unknown assailant” on March 26, 2003 near Law Garden area of Ahmedabad. According to the CBI, the killer was Asgar Ali. But he has since been acquitted of the charge by the Gujarat High Court. “Who could have killed my husband? I have been waiting for over a decade to know,” said Ms. Pandya “What do I tell my children when they ask me why the killers were not caught?” Asgar Ali looked at her intently before replying. “I do not know. But I too have lost ten years of my prime life in jails. Who will give me back my ten ...

To say that the Supreme Court’s verdict of contempt of court against Prashant Bhushan has shocked civil society in India would be an understatement. There has been an outpouring of dismay and anger in which even attorney general K.K. Venugopal has joined. Most of the protest has focussed on the blow that punishing Bhushan will deal to civil liberties, notably the freedom to express an opinion,  the freedom to differ and the freedom to criticise – without which democracy cannot survive. But one feature of the judgment has not received the attention it deserves: the Supreme Court is the court of final appeal in the country. But in this case, it is both  prosecutor and judge. As the Latin phrase goes,  Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?,  or who will guard the guardians? By filing a  suo moto  case against Bhushan before itself, the Supreme Court has forced us to ask this question. And to it, there can be only one answer: that task has now devolved upon the p...

Snoopgate and the Gujarat Model of Governance by India United Against Fascism The Snoopgate story starts with the abduction and cold-blooded murder of an innocent young woman, who was framed as a terrorist by her killers [1]. One of them, G.L. Singhal, kept recordings of his telephone conversations with Minister of State for Home Amit Shah, in case he might need them to exonerate his own conduct. It is clips from these recorded conversations that were released by Gulail and Cobrapost. But the clips they released pertain not to the murder of Ishrat Jahan but to the surveillance of a young woman architect, whom they called Madhuri, over more than a month in 2009 [2]. The BJP’s panic at the release of these tapes is evident from the incoherence of their response. They released a statement, purportedly by the architect’s father, saying he had been anxious for her safety, since she had to commute at all hours between her hotel and the hospital in Ahmedabad where her mother was un...

Two days before his retirement from the Supreme Court, a bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra sentenced Prashant Bhushan for “destablising the very foundation” of the judiciary by posting two tweets. In one of them, Prashant Bhushan said: “When historians in future look back at the last 6 years to see how democracy has been destroyed in India even without a formal Emergency, they will particularly mark the role of the Supreme Court in this destruction, & more particularly the role of the last 4 CJIs.” Prem Shankar Jha: The Shadow of Haren Pandya’s Case Lies Long Over Justice Arun Mishra If Prashant Bhushan’s tweet turns out to be prophetic, then Justice Mishra will figure right alongside these chief justices as their main collaborator. The Supreme Court has come in for greater scrutiny and criticism in recent years than it possibly has at any other time in its 70 years of existence. These criticisms span a range from concerns about the functioning of the institution as a whole to...

NB: My only caveat to these two excellent comments is that the Modi government is an RSS government , and executive actions such as this exemplify the programmatic intentions of a cabal conspiring in broad daylight. DS Meeran Chadha Borwankar: Why appointment of Rakesh Asthana as new Delhi Police chief is brazen overreach by Centre    During various national and state-level conferences, we as police officers have discussed the Supreme Court-mandated police reforms of 2006. We have talked of the damage that politicians have done to civil services, including to the police, by encouraging a crony culture. We have welcomed the Court’s directions about the formation of Establishment Boards in the states and the involvement of the UPSC in selecting state police chiefs. We have also welcomed “fixed tenures” for officers who are otherwise at the mercy of local political leaders for postings, transfers and continuation.  And yet we, the retired and in-service police officers, are...

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 instit...