COURT, JUDGES, JUDGEMENTS AND CONTEMPT OF COURT.

COURT, JUDGES, JUDGEMENTS AND CONTEMPT OF COURT.

I had not been a frequent visitor to the courts or sitting in the court halls in front of any judg.  Altogether it might have been only three times that I had been to the lowest courts.  I learnt a lot during these three visits.  What I noticed is the courts and the judges are treated as most sacred institutions.  When a judge enters the court hall all stand and show respect to the judge.  If one passes from one side of the court to another side he/she bows down to the honourable judge and go to the other side of the court hall.  While sitting on  benches you should take care not to put your one leg over the other.  Many of these observances are not practiced in the mosques, churches or in temples. 

All over the world the courts have been held with highest respect and any derogative statement against the court or a judge is considered as contempt of court and a punishable offence.  This is a noble spirit that all the citizens of this planet should imbibe.  All believe that judges and courts always and per se uphold the truth.  The law makers whose laws are applied to pass judgements also pay highest respect to judges and the seat of judgement.

P Chitamberam states, “Dr. Sen has been convicted by a court of law; many persons have said the trial court judgement is unsatisfactory; it may be, but the only way to correct it is by filing an appeal.”  “Those who respect democracy must also respect the process of democracy, and those who respect law must also respect the process of law.” 

The editorial of The Economic Times on Tuesday, 4^th January 2011 has raised many questions.  I quote some of the most salient points from it.

The former law minister Shanti Bhushan said that eight out of sixteen Chief Justices of India were corrupt.  Now allegations have surfaced against the brother of former CJK G. Balakrishnan, suggesting the Supreme court may have erred in singling out only the Allahabad High court for its famous comment,‘something is rotten’.  Clearly there is much that is wrong with our judicial system. . .”

“In November three member judicial committee set up by the Rajya Sabha chairman which found Calcutta High Court judge Soumitra Sen guilty of misappropriating ‘large sums’ of money clearing the way for his impeachment.  Justice Ramaswami before him should have been impeached but he was not and Soumitra Sen might not be impeached.  Earlier we had the farce of the former Chief Justice of Karnataka High court, P D Dinakaran, being allowed to take over as Chief Justice of the Sikkim High Court, while he was facing impeachment proceedings in the Rajya Sabha.”

When it is stated that the judges corrupt and the courts “rotten” does it not mean that the courts and the judges are blamed as courts and judges.  There is no assumption that the moment the court commences the proceeding and judges sit on their seat of judgement there is a metamorphosis and the courts as institutions and the judges become objective and non corrupt.  When Shanti Bhushan states that eight out of sixteen chief Justices of India were corrupt he means to say they were corrupt as judges and they passed unfair judgement and the guilty escaped and the innocent suffered injustice at the hands of the judges. 

I would like to add another dimension to the corruption.  It is not when one takes money to favour the guilty but it could also be for political reason or social reason making a judge to pass unfair judgement.  We have heard of A. Raja trying to pressurise a judge in giving bail to one of Raja’s associate in Tamilnadu.

Now we come to another dimension of justice.  It is the police force in India.  Corruption in police force and police violating human rights, police atrocities against the civilians, police under the control of politicians are some things that do not come as rare occurrences.  There have been frequent debates on the nature of investigations done by the prime investigating agency called CBI; be it in Bofors’ case, or corruption cases against the people in high offices.  The opposition parties whoever get their turn will continue to cry over the lack of independence of CBI.  For two years we hear about the 2G spectrum scam where A Raja is involved.  He was allowed to continue as a minister till the Supreme Court asked the CBI to investigate into the scam.  

Now when we put together these facts we need to know what would be the quality of justice that is handed down to the citizens? 

The country had been waiting for several years to hear a judgement on Ayodhya case.  The judgement that came out and the ground on which this judgement was passed are not beyond question.

We have a reported case of a very low ranking government servant charged with imprisonment for taking bribe of Rs. 50/.  More than 17 years after he was caught accepting a bribe of Rs 50, the Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the one-year sentence imposed under the Prevention of Corruption Act on a municipal body employee of Tamil Nadu. 

Kootha Perumal, an employee of Pudukottai Municipality, was caught on August 23, 1993, by Anti Corruption Bureau sleuths for demanding and accepting a bribe of Rs 50 from the complainant Nayinar Mohammed, for issuing a tax certificate to enable him obtain a loan from a finance company.  "We are of the considered opinion that the trial court as well as the high court have analyzed the entire evidence and clearly held that a demand was definitely made by the appellant for delivery of the tax certificate," a bench of justices B Sudershan Reddy and Surinder Singh Nijjar said in their judgment. 

We have now the case of Dr. Binayak Sen charged with sedition and given life imprisonment.  There are statement to the contrary about the so called the evidence of passing letters from the Naxalite prisoner, as Dr. Binayak Sen did not visit the Naxalite prisoner without the presence of prison guards and whatever document that the court says was found with Dr. Binayak Sen did not contain any material that would cause any alarm.  There are so many goof ups in the evidence against Binayak Sen: his link with ISI of Pakistan and contacting a person called Fernandes, the location of his arrest, the documents seized from him, to mention a few.  Do these indicate ignorance or bad will, asks Rev. Fr. Walter Fenandes, S.J., former director of Indian Social Institute (ISI), Delhi.

If someone possesses assets disproportionate to the known source of his/her income is deemed corruption then what would we call a judgement that is disproportionate to the evidence at the disposal of the court?

On August 26, 2009 Dr. Manmohan Singh addressed the CBI exhorting the agency to aggressively pursue corruption at high level and change the perception that while petty cases were quickly tackled, the “big fish escaped punishment.  I must tell the honourable prime minister that what he calls the ‘perception’ is not perception but a reality.