Dalits Diary - e News Weekly

Working For The Rights & Survival Of The Oppressed

Editor: NAGARAJA.M.R VOL.11 issue.31 . 09 / 08 / 2017

`Surrendered Maoists Tried

By `Surrendered Judges
in Human Rights by Sumanta Banerjee July 12, 2017

Nandini Sundars case study of Podiyam Pandas plight as a victim of the police plot to
show him off to the press as a surrendered Maoist (re: Questionable legality of
the Surrender Process in Chhattisgarh in the Counter-currents website of May 23, 2017),
not only re-iterates the well-established notorious role of the Indian police in framing
innocent people, but also throws light on the role of the judiciary, which unwittingly,
indirectly, or purposefully, often collaborates with the police . If we look at the historical
record of some of the verdicts rendered by judges, both at the district and state levels, as
well as at the apex court, over the last several decades, we find a continuity of sorts.
Indian judges by and large, have sacrificed their professional obligation to deliver justice to
the poor victims, by acquitting their oppressors through judgments that reflect their caste
and class-oriented biases, and also their subservience to the ruling powers.

The most scandalous example of the Indian judiciarys bias in favour of the upper-caste
and upper-class, was the judgment delivered by the Madras High Court in 1973 , when it
acquitted all the twenty odd upper caste people who were accused of burning to death
some forty two Dalits, including women and children, in their huts in Kilvenmani in
Tamilnadu in December, 1968. While acquitting them, the honourable (?) judges said: The
rich landlords could not be expected to commit such crimesit was difficult to believe that
they would walk bodily to the scene and set fire to the houses Since then, a large
number of the judgments delivered, whether from the lower courts or at the apex level,
have reflected a similar bias in favour of the privileged classes and the majoritarian Hindu
beliefs and customs on the one hand, and prejudices against members of the poorer classes
who dare to protest against oppression, and Muslim minorities (who suffer from discrimination)
on the other.

In October, 2013, a division bench of the Patna High Court acquitted all the twenty seven
upper caste Bhumihar landlords of the Ranvir Sena, who massacred fifty eight Dalits in
Laxmanpur-Bathanitola in Bihar in 1997 even after they were convicted by the sessions
court in 2010. Rejecting their conviction, the division bench consisting of Justices V.N.
Sinha and A.K. Lal ruled that the witnesses (to the massacre, mainly coming from the
neighbouring Dalit community) who were produced by the prosecution were not reliable,
and hence the appellants (the Bhumihar landlords who had approached the high court
against their conviction) `deserved to be given the benefit of the doubt. Following this
judgment, the killers were soon released and for all that you know, they are now on the
rampage against Dalits in their fiefdom in Laxmanpur-Bathanitola. I wish a reporter visits
those villages today to find out how the survivors of the 1997 massacre protect themselves
from the possible reprisal by the released Bhumihar landlords.

Take another case of religious bias of the judiciary. In 2015, a Pune engineer Mohsin
Sheikh was killed by members of the Hindu Rashtra Sena. Seventeen of them were
arrested. The Bombay High Court granted bail to three of them on the basis of a peculiarly
contrived argument: The applicants (accused) had no other motive such as any personal
enmity against the innocent deceased Mohsin. The fault of the deceased was only that he
belonged to another religion. The judge then added: I consider this factor in favour of the
applicants/accused. Moreover, the applicants/accused have no criminal record and it appears
that in the name of the religion, they were provoked and have committed the murder. (Re:
Aloke Prasanna Kumars article in The Wire, 16/01/2017). Should a judge who pardons
murder in the name of religion be allowed to function ? Do not such judges defile the
institution of judiciary ?

The Indian judiciarys selective evaluation of offences

While acquitting the upper caste and upper class murderers of the downtrodden agricultural
labourers and dalits, members of the Indian judiciary had chosen to sentence to
imprisonment and even death those who come from the depressed and religious
minorities who dare to assert their rights or protest against atrocities of the state. Some of
these judgments, delivered at various levels, can be described as gradations of offences
according to the predilections and prejudices of the individual judge, or the bench
whether political or religious, or purely from nationalistic impulses (like `my country, right or
wrong.)

One of the worst stains on our judiciary that has been left by such predilection of judges,
was the Supreme Courts judgment sentencing Afzal Guru to death. He was implicated in
the attack on Indian Parliament on December 31, 2001. The attack exposed the failure of
the Indian governments intelligence agencies and security forces to protect Parliament.
Unable to trace and punish the main culprits (who were operating from Pakistan), these
agencies needed a scapegoat and the easily available one was Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri
separatist. Despite gaping holes in the long drawn out case against Guru, after more than
a decade, the Supreme Court passed the death sentence on him on the ground:
collective conscience of the (sic.) society will only be satisfied if the capital punishment is
awarded to the offender. How could the honourable judges define collective
conscience ? Did they seek a popular verdict through a
referendum, to test whether the entire collective was in favour of the death
sentence ? In fact, during all those years of the hearing of the case, large sections of
the collective, including not only citizens of Kashmir where
Afzal Guru was born, but human rights groups and lawyers
gathered from all over India, to defend a young man who was
held guilty by association only. Shamefully, even President
Pranab Mukherjee - the much-trumpeted erudite ex-professor - acted
like a rubber stamp of the government and the judiciary by
rejecting Afzal Gurus mercy plea. Yet, he could have exercised
his discretionary powers which he enjoys under the Constitution,
to save the life of a young man. I wonder, whether on the
eve of his retirement from presidentship, does he suffer from
pangs of his individual conscience ? Or, has he sacrificed it for the so-called
`collective conscience as defined by a judiciary, that seems to be swayed by the hyper-
nationalist rhetoric of the Indian state.

The latest example of judicial terrorism if I may be allowed to use that term even if
inviting the charge of contempt of court - is the judgment delivered
by the Principal District and Sessions Judge, S.S. Shinde in the
district court in Gadchiroli, in March 2017, against the wheel-
chair bound Delhi University professor G.N. Saibaba, accusing him
of aiding and abetting Naxalite activities. Widely well-respected by his students and
colleagues, he has been sentenced to life-imprisonment. The following words of the judgment
expose the inhuman and vindictive psyche of the judge who sentenced him : Merely
because Saibaba is 90 percent disabled is no ground to show him leniency he is physically
handicapped but he is mentally fit, a thinktank and a high-profile leader of banned
organizations.

Judges torn between conscience and rules

But there are other judges who want to stick to the rules, and yet fail to deliver justice.
While acquitting the accused (of crimes like communal and casteist offences), they usually
take the plea that the prosecution had not provided enough evidence to convict
the accused. This is a legalese that ignores the behind-the-
scenes operations that take place in the usually long-drawn out
cases. In such secret operations, the accused from the upper
class and upper caste groups (involved in class and caste based
killings), and from the majority Hindu community (accused of
massacring Muslims), threaten the witnesses for the prosecution
to withdraw their complaints, and they are made to turn hostile
(another legalese). Witnesses in India are seldom left to themselves. They are tutored, bribed or
threatened either by the police to build up their prosecution cases, or by the defence to support their
efforts to get the accused free. The common citizen who had been unfortunate enough to be hauled
up as a witness in a court case had always been a victim of this cross-fire. Flip-flops in their
statements had thus been a part of Indian judicial proceedings for years which had led to the
acquittal of the guilty or the sentencing of the innocent.
The role of Zaheera Sheikh (who reneged on her earlier testimony in the Best Bakery case
during the 2002 Gujarat killings) puts the crisis in a sharp focus. Human rights activists who were
initially enthused over her courage to give testimony against the guilty were soon dismayed by her
volte face. They speculate now over a misty web of various possibilities that could have brought
about the change a combination of threats and bribes by the BJP patrons of those accused of the
Best Bakery carnage; pressures from her family in view of the financial benefits accruing to them if
she reneged on her testimony; her seduction by the comforts of expensive hotels and guest houses
the first time in the life of a young daughter of a poor baker. She was put up here by the Gujarat
police when they discovered that her retraction in the role of a hostile witness in the
court was the best clean chit that they could ever get to cover up their
abetment in the killings at Best Bakery. Thus, powerful interests can
bribe the police to dilute the chargesheets against them by
inducing them to leave out the vital eye-witnesses of their
crimes, or turning these witnesses into hostile. This allows the judges to
complain that the prosecution has not provided `enough evidence. But the judges can surely
suo motu intervene by appointing an amicus curiae to investigate into such cases to bring
out the truth.

The other plea given by the judges is that their hands are tied by the provisions of the
various criminal laws that they have to adhere to when passing judgments. A typical
example is the death sentence passed on the two famous
Naxalite peasant revolutionaries Krista Gowd and Bhoomaiah by no less a person than
the then Supreme Court judge V.R. Krishna Iyer on October 3, 1975 . Although he emerged
as a champion of human rights in the post-Emergency period, Krishna Iyer signed the
death sentence of these two revolutionaries during the Emergency on two grounds mainly.
First, Assuming that (their) offences are political offences, under the Indian Penal, murder
is murder and judges cannot rewrite the law whatever their views on death sentence, as
citizens may be, and interfere where they have no jurisdiction.

The second ground was that the Supreme Court did not have the power to have a judicial
review of the executive powers of the President under Article 72 of the Indian Constitution,
which authorized the President to reject mercy petitions, and sentence the applicants to
death (under sub-clause ) . The then President, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, had earlier rejected
the mercy petition of the two Naxalite leaders. While passing the death sentence, Justice
Krishna Iyer stated: Wecannot find out way to interfere with what the President has
done. But Justice Iyer could have drawn the attention of the Governor of the then Andhra
Pradesh state (under the jurisprudence of which Kista Gowd and Bhoomaiyah were on the
death row at Mushirabad jail in Hyderabad at that time) to another clause of the same
Article 72. Clause 3 of that Article says: Nothing in sub-clause shall affect the power to
suspend, remit or commute a sentence excercisable by the Governor of a State under any
law for the time being in force. But Justice Iyer, for some reason or other, did not use this
last discretionary power left to him, to throw the ball to the court of the then Governor of
Andhra Pradesh at least in a final bid to save the lives of these two peasant
revolutionaries.

The twin `holy cows judiciary and the President

The judiciary and the President in India increasingly appear to take on the role of holy
cows - claiming to be sacrosanct and beyond any questioning.
The former, at the drop of a hat, hauls up dissidents who
challenge their verdicts, on the charge of contempt of court, (e.g.
Arundhati Roys case), or on the graver charge of `sedition (a colonial term, still retained in
our penal code, shamefully by an Independent India), aimed mainly at those who raise
legitimate questions about the Indian states policies towards disgruntled nationalities like
Kashmiris, Manipuris and ethnic-based movements. It is a long haul for those accused of
these charges, to get acquitted.

In extreme cases, when the judiciary condemns these people to death, their last resort is
the President to whom they can send mercy petitions. But the President being elevated to
the position of another holy cow, under the Constitution - had usually
been a hoof-stamp (a la ` rubber stamp) President. Just like Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, who
stamped his hoof rejecting the mercy petitions of Bhoomaiyah and Kishta Gowd, allowing
them to be hanged, his successor Pranab Mukherjee similarly signed with his hoof the
rejection of the mercy petition of Afzal Guru without considering the legal controversies
surrounding allegations about his involvement in the Parliament attack.

From the brief historical account narrated above, it should be evident to conscientious
readers that the Indian judicial system had been dominated for years by judges (and
lawyers too) who had been quite brazen in expressing their biases against dalits, tribals,
Muslims and political dissidents like sympathizers of the Maoist rebels (e.g. Professor J. N.
Saibaba). For most of the common Indian citizens who are fighting for justice, or
simply asserting their rights whether the tribal villagers of Bastar and Jharkhand, or
oppressed dalits in other parts of the country, or workers retrenched from factories, or even
non-partisan Muslim students (accused by the police on false charges, who spend years in jail
before being acquitted by some discerning judge at the higher court) it is impossible to
gain justice through the expensively steep hierarchical staircase of the judicial system. While
a few are lucky to climb up (with the help of lawyers) to reach the step that allows them
acquittal, the majority remain imprisoned for years in jails all over India, as under trial
prisoners. Do we have to wait for another Bastille , to rescue these innocent poor from the
jails, and to sing with Joan Baez: Raise the prisons to the ground ?

Editorial : Biased Judges of India

Read details at following web sites.

Judges Connive with VIP Prisoners

https://sites.google.com/site/indiansdiary/judges-connive-with-vip-prisoners ,

https://sites.google.com/site/indiansdiary/5-star-jails-judges ,

Traitors in Judiciary & Police

https://www.scribd.com/document/329980170/Traitors-in-Judiciary-Police ,
Crimes by Khaki

https://sites.google.com/site/sosevoiceforjustice/crimes-by-khaki

FIRST Answer Judges Police

https://www.scribd.com/document/336585411/FIRST-Answer-Judges-Police

SHAME SHAME JUDGEs - Atrocities against DALITs by Judges

https://sites.google.com/site/sosevoiceforjustice/shame-shame-judges ,

https://sites.google.com/site/eclarionofdalit/shame-shame-judges

Notice To Chief Justice of India

https://sites.google.com/site/sosevoiceforjustice/notice-to-chief-justice ,

Judicial Tyranny

https://sites.google.com/site/dalitsdiary/judicial-tyranny ,

edited , printed , published & owned by NAGARAJA.M.R. @ : LIG-2 / 761 , HUDCO

FIRST STAGE , OPP WATER WORKS OFFICE , LAKSHMIKANTANAGAR
,HEBBAL ,MYSORE -570017 INDIA

cell : 91 8970318202

home page:

http://eclarionofdalit.dalitonline.in/ ,
https://in.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dalitsdiary/ ,

https://sites.google.com/site/dalitsdiary/ ,

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/dalits--diary ,

https://dalitsdiary.blogspot.in/ ,

https://eclarionofdalit.wordpress.com/ ,

http://thecitizens.torpress2sarn7xw.onion/ ,

Contact : Naag@protonmail.com , Naag@dalitonline.in ,

Secure Mail : Naag@torbox3uiot6wchz.onion ,

Dalits Diary - e News Weekly

Working For The Rights & Survival Of The Oppressed

Editor: NAGARAJA.M.R VOL.11 issue.31 . 09 / 08 / 2017

Editorial : Biased Judges of India

Read details at following web sites.

Judges Connive with VIP Prisoners

https://sites.google.com/site/indiansdiary/judges-connive-with-vip-prisoners ,

https://sites.google.com/site/indiansdiary/5-star-jails-judges ,
Traitors in Judiciary & Police

https://www.scribd.com/document/329980170/Traitors-in-Judiciary-Police ,

Crimes by Khaki

https://sites.google.com/site/sosevoiceforjustice/crimes-by-khaki

FIRST Answer Judges Police

https://www.scribd.com/document/336585411/FIRST-Answer-Judges-Police

SHAME SHAME JUDGEs - Atrocities against DALITs by Judges

https://sites.google.com/site/sosevoiceforjustice/shame-shame-judges ,

https://sites.google.com/site/eclarionofdalit/shame-shame-judges

Notice To Chief Justice of India

https://sites.google.com/site/sosevoiceforjustice/notice-to-chief-justice ,

Judicial Tyranny

https://sites.google.com/site/dalitsdiary/judicial-tyranny ,

edited , printed , published & owned by NAGARAJA.M.R. @ : LIG-2 / 761 , HUDCO

FIRST STAGE , OPP WATER WORKS OFFICE , LAKSHMIKANTANAGAR
,HEBBAL ,MYSORE -570017 INDIA
 cell : 91 8970318202

home page:

http://eclarionofdalit.dalitonline.in/ ,

https://in.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dalitsdiary/ ,

https://sites.google.com/site/dalitsdiary/ ,

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/dalits--diary ,

https://dalitsdiary.blogspot.in/ ,

https://eclarionofdalit.wordpress.com/ ,

http://thecitizens.torpress2sarn7xw.onion/ ,

Contact : Naag@protonmail.com , Naag@dalitonline.in ,

Secure Mail : Naag@torbox3uiot6wchz.onion ,