Category Archives: Law

Government, Law, Politics

Each day Binayak Sen spends in jail is one day less for democracy in India

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ON DECEMBER 10 this year, the day internationally observed as Human Rights Day, the Supreme Court of India denied bail to the veteran rights activist, Dr Binayak Sen, incarcerated since May in Raipur jail under the Chhattisgarh Public Security Act and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. For those present, the 45-minute-long hearing was a horrible experience. We heard the prosecution claim that Dr Sen was part of the dreaded Maoist formation, and that giving him his freedom would mean setting him loose to spread subversion against the State. We saw, to our shock, how no verification was made of the prosecution’s claims, even as the government lawyer presented his summary of the contents of Dr Sen’s computer in the vilest terms, telling the court it contained letters describing how Dr Sen had helped organise an arms training camp at Nagpur. Defence counsel Rajeev Dhawan pointed out that the prosecution was distorting the letter’s contents, that Dr Sen had been in Nagpur in the course of a fact-finding mission into last year’s lynching of a Dalit family at Kherlanji and that he had nothing to do with any underground training. But the court felt that Dhawan’s arguments were matters to be looked into by the trial court, and it was satisfied that there was enough reason to deny Dr Sen bail.

Continue reading Each day Binayak Sen spends in jail is one day less for democracy in India →

Government, Law, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Human rights and public health are now the gravest threats to people’s safety

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Excerpts from Saikat Datta on the doctored case against Binayak Sen.

What is the basis of the Chhattisgarh police’s case against Dr Sen? The chargesheet against him says he is a Naxalite sympathiser. This conclusion was reached after his name came up when the police recovered three letters from suspected Maoist Piyush Guha, arrested at the Raipur railway station. These were written to Guha by another alleged Maoist, Narayan Sanyal, presently lodged in Raipur Jail. The police claim Guha, under custodial interrogation, confessed that Dr Sen acted as courier.

Dr Sen did meet Sanyal in jail on several occasions. But each time it was with due permission from the jail superintendent and a body search before and after his meetings. And even if we were to accept that Dr Sen smuggled the letters out, what exactly was “incriminating” in them? One letter deals with farmer-related issues, the letter writer’s health and so on. In another note, Sanyal is discussing issues relating to his case and the approach his lawyer has taken in court. In yet another, he complains of there being “no
magazines” to read in jail and terrible conditions in prison.

Activist-lawyers like Prashant Bhushan see the framing of Dr Sen on such flimsy evidence as “a message that clearly states that people must shut their eyes to violations of human rights of the marginalised or risk arrest”.

Continue reading Human rights and public health are now the gravest threats to people’s safety →

Government, Law

It’s a new year, and Binayak Sen is still in prison

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Binayak Sen’s appeal to the Supreme Court for bail was dismissed on December 10, 2007 (in one of those meaningless ironies, December 10th is of course, International Human Rights Day).

A doctor working in Chhattisgarh, Binayak was arrested on May 14th 2007. His crime? He visited and treated an ailing prisoner in Raipur Central Jail with the permission of the jail authorities. The prisoner is a Naxalite. So Dr Sen is assumed to be a terrorist conspiring to overthrow the state, so dangerous that he cannot be given bail.

Continue reading It’s a new year, and Binayak Sen is still in prison →

Centre watch, Debates, Genders, Law, Politics

Monobina Gupta on Inconvenient Women

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Recently Kiran Bedi, the country’s first woman police officer, sought voluntary retirement after being in the eye of a storm following her allegations of gender discrimination in the police force. Bedi, who had transformed Tihar jail from filthy dungeons to a clean and livable place and has had an outstanding career, was superseded for the post of Delhi’s police commissioner. Because she was a woman.

Women in civil service have come up against sexism time and again. Madhu Bhaduri, who joined the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) in 1968, recalls how women IFS officers launched their first protest against blatant gender discrimination in this elite branch of service, which was at that time wrapped up in layers of  discriminatory codes.

Here is an account of how it all started…

Continue reading Monobina Gupta on Inconvenient Women →

Capitalism, Ecology/Environment, Law

The Shotgun and the Sniper

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“The time for silver bullets has passed,” proclaimed Marc Stewart, “What we need is a Shotgun!” In his bright Bali shirt, Nike sneakers and Investment Banker haircut, Mr Stewart is the firm-handshaking, fist pumping, ever effusive all-American co-founder of Ecosecurities, a firm that specialises in developing and marketing carbon trading projects under the Clean Development Mechanism – CDM – of the Kyoto Protocol. With emission reductions under Kyoto less than a month away, Mr Stewart’s firm is looking to extend its market capitalisation to far beyond its existing 40 million USD. The Ecosecurity model functions in the following way – they find and help develop projects in the developing world that is eligible for credit credits under the CDM, and then sell the credits to firms in EU, and across the world, that are looking to meet their Kyoto targets by offsetting excess emissions against carbon credits. Firms like Ecosecurities pushed the carbon market to 30 billion dollars in 2006; and if Annex 1 agrees to further emission cuts (25-40 per cent below 1992 by 2020) the potential size of the market is open to the most optimistic hyperbole.

The “Shotgun Approach” suggested by Stewart was his response to the fact Continue reading The Shotgun and the Sniper →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Identities, Language, Law, Left watch, Violence/Conflict

The Sword and the Monk’ s Cowl: Curfew in Kolkata

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“Instead of society having conquered a new content for itself, it seems that the state has only returned to its oldest form, to a shamelessly simple rule by the sword and the monk’s cowl. “

-Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon

We live in strange times. Really strange times. Just as the news from Kolkata was getting better, it got worse again.The sudden spectre of ‘communal rioting’ has reared its head, as if from nowhere in West Bengal. The All India Minorities Forum, a little known entity led by a busy body called Idris Ali materialized yersterday on the streets of Kolkata demanding the deportation of the exiled Bangladeshi writer, on the grounds that she had once injured the sensitivities of Muslims. Crowds attacked police, pitched street battles continued, the Army was called in. Curfew was declared, and on television, Biman Bose, a CPI(M) and ‘Left’ Front hatchet man, declared – “… if her stay creates a problem for peace, she (Nasrin) should leave the state” (see NDTV report at the end of this posting)

Continue reading The Sword and the Monk’ s Cowl: Curfew in Kolkata →

Debates, Genders, Law, Politics, Sex

Another Supreme Court

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Even as our own dearly beloved Supreme Court repeatedly shows contempt of the people by handing over tribal lands to corporations and urban spaces to mall developers, the judges across the border seem to be on a radically different track. As is well known by now, the initial dismissal of Chief Justice Iftikhar Choudhary by General Musharraf – an action that launched a million mutinies – was at least partly to punish him for his order preventing the sale of Pakistan Steel Mills to a private group.

As the democratic upsurge in Pakistan carries on unabated, here is a lesser known story, sent to me about a month ago by Nighat Said Khan (better known as Bunny) Women’s Action Forum activist. It is an eye-witness account of the hearing in June 2007, in the Supreme Court of Pakistan, on the appeal by the ‘she-couple’, as a story in Dawn dubbed them, seeking dismissal of a High Court decision sentencing them to three years’ imprisonment for perjury. Not only is the order by the Supreme Court exemplary for its commitment to individual rights, Bunny’s account highlights the extraordinary sensitivity and awareness shown by both the lawyer representing the couple, Babar Awan, and the judges hearing the case.

If this is Pakistan’s judiciary, no wonder the general is a little lost in his labyrinth…

Over to Nighat Said Khan.

Continue reading Another Supreme Court →

Government, Law

The Righteous Anger of Our Hon’ble Lords

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A treat to the eyes and ears this! The screaming headlines in the newspapers today: “Angry SC talks of Prez Rule as DMK shuts TN” (The Times of India). “SCs new anger Benchmark: We can get the state government sacked” (The Indian Express).

Rewind to 1992. 6 December. A bewildered country watched aghast as a mob led by the soon-to-be Deputy Prime Minister, Home Minister and other important personages – including the chief minister of a certain state where an old monument was located, demolished the monument. This was done after the motely crowd of ministers-to-be and chief minister et al gave their commitment to the honourable Supreme Court that they will not demolish the monument. Remember. This was not a peaceful bandh but an act that changed the face of India forever and led to some of the worst carnages in our post-independence history. Were the hon’ble lordships angry? Did they demand the dismissal of the Kalyan Singh government – or threaten it? And did they decide to take any action against the Advanis and Joshis?

Fast forward a decade. Gujarat 2002. February 27-28 onwards – not one day but for months on end…a series of carnages that reduce December 1992 to child’s play. This is not so very long back But did the conscience of the judiciary lead it to demand – or simply threaten – the dismissal of the Narendra Modi government? The fact that the DMK is a strong ally of the UPA government has been invoked this time but at that time, the state government was led not by an ally but the leading party of the ruling NDA coalition.

I hold no brief for the DMK or any other party for that matter but am simply puzzled…and this could be a crime these days. But one word may not be out of place. The honourable judges may ban the written word and jail the Mid Day journalists or anybody else who dares to challenge the undemocratic writ of the courts, but who can jail those thousands and lakhs of spoken words that are being uttered daily about this same matter – undermining the authority of one of the most august institutions of our democracy. Who can jail that mall owner businessman in Vasant Vihar who recently told a friend of mine that he really was not worried about the judiciary because he knew that its judgement in a certain case would go in his favour?

Debates, Government, Law

Perils of Arbitrariness – MSS Pandian

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The Central Educational Institution (Reservation and Admission) Act, 2006, which provides for 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in institutions of higher learning, is in a state of deep freeze. The Union Government’s desperate promises to expand the educational infrastructure in these institutions, to increase the number of seats so that the number of open quota seats will remain the same, and to address the issue of creamy layer, has failed to convince the Supreme Court. After a court battle of five long months, a Supreme Court Bench has finally refused to vacate the stay on the Act imposed in March 2007.
The Supreme Court’s objection to the Act is quite straightforward and seemingly reasonable. It posed to the Union Government, what is the basis on which the figure 27 per cent had been arrived at. The Union Government failed to come up with any credible answer and the Supreme Court, as one would expect, stuck to its position. In other words, Supreme Court wants no legislation to be arbitrary but be based on defendable rational basis.
Continue reading Perils of Arbitrariness – MSS Pandian →

Government, Law

“The questioning of the arrested persons is on now”, he said

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Every now and then, some “terrorist” or another is arrested. Never an alleged terrorist, but a proclaimed one. Every now and then there is a blast that kills dozens. We never know who commits these attacks. We never will. A man has been sentenced to death this morning for an attack on the Red Fort. What a circus this is, and what an audience we are. Two news reports below. The first one will affect your reading of the second one. Continue reading “The questioning of the arrested persons is on now”, he said →

Countryside, Government, Law, Media politics, Violence/Conflict

Roma’s Arrest, Land Mafias and the Indian Police State

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Even as semi-literate journalists and supposed pundits in the Capital celebrated the 60 years of the “world’s largest democracy”(incidentally the greatest and most grotesque cliché of our times), away from the “watchful eyes” of the media, other less savoury stories have been playing themselves out. Brave and self-effacing women activists like Roma, have been arrested under the National Security Act and have now been labeled as ‘Maoist’, according to a report in the Jansatta (Ambarish Kumar, 17 August, “Manavidhikar Karyakarta to Ab Naxali Banane ki Muhim”). This is no small and isolated happening. It is, in a microcosm, the story of what this ‘largest democracy’ is all about. The ultimate weapon of a desperate police force (widely used all across the length and breath of the country) of ‘labeling a dog mad before killing it’ is being brought into play to deal with peaceful struggles of ordinary people.

For those who have any idea of the activities of activists like Roma, this is a lie of the most blatant sort. Roma has been long active in organizing the tribals and landless Dalits, and especially, of late, landless women to fight for their property rights. Roma’s struggle has been fought under the banner of Dr Ambedkar, Jyotiba Phule, Savitri Bai Phule, Birsa Munda and Rani Lakshmibai and has never resorted to any kind of violent means. Nonetheless, her arrest, along with Shanta Bhattacharya and Malati, in Sonbhadra district of UP, shows that even such non-violent and constitutional struggle is becoming impossible in large parts of the country today. It is the state and the police that are producing Maoists by the hour. It is not without reason that former Prime Minister VP Singh had to proclaim in utter exasperation that he too wants to become a Maoist. It is the utter cynical contempt with which the state, the judiciary and the media have treated a long and peaceful struggle against land acquisition – the Narmada Bachao Andolan – that sends out the signal, loud and clear that the only language that the state and the cohorts of corporate capital understand is that of the gun.

Continue reading Roma’s Arrest, Land Mafias and the Indian Police State →

Bad ideas, Culture, Law, Left watch, Right watch

The Attack on Taslima Nasrin in Hyderabad

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Dear All (apologies for cross posting on Kafila.org and the Sarai Reader List)

The recent attack on Taslima Nasreen has again shown how fragile the freedom of expression is in India today. It breaks whenever a sentimental reader or viewer has their ‘sentiments challenged’. Are all these worthy gentlemen who go about obstructing screenings and readings suffering from some early childhood trauma that makes it difficult for them to countenance growing up and acquiring the ability to listen to contrary point of view? How long are we to be held hostage to their infantile suffering?

What is worse is the fact that the people who attacked her, and have made public threats to kill her – activists and elected representatives belonging to MIM, a leftover of the Nizam’s hated Razakars, were arrested and then let off on bail. So, the message that the state sends out to these goons is – “threaten to kill, be taken to a police station to have a cup of tea, have your picture taken, be splashed in the media, go home and make some more threats.”

see – http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=90746

Continue reading The Attack on Taslima Nasrin in Hyderabad →

Government, Law

Take a moment to help STOP TORTURE in India

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Dear friends,
Amnesty International expresses its support for victims of torture and ill-treatment, past and present and condemns its practice in India. As of June 26, the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, Amnesty International India is intensifying its work against torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by launching a campaign against torture and ill-treatment in the ‘war on terror’.
The victims of torture in India span far and wide, be it disadvantaged social, political or ethnic groups like the dalits, women and adivasis or be it in Jammu and Kashmir, the North East, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and other areas affected by the acts of state and non-state actors.
India has signed, but not ratified the Convention against Torture. It is one of only 8 countries that have not done so. Amnesty International India has on several occasions expressed grave concerns over the fact that torture and ill-treatment continue to be endemic throughout India and continue to deny human dignity to thousands of individuals.

Continue reading Take a moment to help STOP TORTURE in India →

Law

J’accuse : A Children’s Doctor and A Mighty State

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It has been more than ten days that Dr Binayak Sen, a paediatrician by training and profession and a human rights activist by choice has received a new identity. – A menace to public safety – The Chattisgarh police whose own record of human rights violations would shame even the KPS Gills, has used the provisions of the draconian Public Safety Act and Unlawful Activities Prevention Act ( a substitute for POTA ) to detain Dr Binayak Sen in the wee hours of 14 th May.

Question naturally arises how does a graduate from the prestigious Christian Medical College, Vellore who has been associated with several community health programmes for the last three decades, who even contributed to the state government’s conceptualisation of community health programme ‘Mitanin’ and who played a significant role in the evolution of ‘Shaheed Hospital’ – a hospital started by workers for the workers under the leadership of legendary Shankar Guha Niyogi, has suddenly metamorphosed into a menace to public safety ?

Continue reading J’accuse : A Children’s Doctor and A Mighty State →

Government, Law, Metropolis, Violence/Conflict

The Impossibility of Satire

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The first impulse that one has after coming out of a court hearing is to create a satire that accurately captures the slightly bizarre and terrifying vision of judges that one has had a chance to experience. But can caricature really live up to its responsibility of laughing truth to power? John Beger has said that “Graphic caricature is dead because life has outstripped it. Or more accurately, because satire is only possible when a moral reserve still exists, and those reserves have been used up. We are too used to being appalled by ourselves to be able to react to the idea of caricature”. So instead of imposing an impossible goal for satire, let us allow the court speak for themselves. Continue reading The Impossibility of Satire →

Government, Law, Media politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Gujarat Fake Encounters: The Spin Doctoring has Begun

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The Gujarat Fake Encounter Story is rapidly being scripted along the familiar lines of the ‘Corrupt Policeman-Corrupt Politician-Underworld Links’ nexus. While this may be true, (and I do not doubt that Narendra Modi, who holds the ‘Home’ portfolio in Gujarat, must not be entirely un-involved in this matter) it would be unfortunate if the Gujarat ‘fake encounter killings’ , like ‘fake encounter’ stories in Kashmir, Delhi or elsewhere are now spun into ‘systemic aberrations’. Rather, they should be seen as evidence of how the system actually works, and how efficient it is.

Continue reading Gujarat Fake Encounters: The Spin Doctoring has Begun →

Everyday Life, Law, Metropolis, Theory

Devastating Looks: Smirks, Quirks and Judicial Authority

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Devastating Looks: Smirks, Quirks and Judicial Authority

Raoul Vaneigem, the Belgian philosopher writes that “The economy of everyday life is based on a continuous exchange of humiliations and aggressive attitudes. It conceals a technique of wear and tear which is itself prey to the gift of destruction which it invites contradictorily”. In an incredible story in his chapter on humiliation, Vaneigem says that one day, when Rousseau was traveling through a crowded village, he was insulted by a lowly peasant whose insults delighted the crowd. The great philosopher Rousseau was completely taken aback and flushed with anger, but could not think of a single thing to say in reply and was forced to take to his heels amidst the jeers of the crowd. By the time he had finally regained his composure and thought of a thousand possible retorts, any one of which would have silenced the joker once and for all, he was at two hours distance from the village.

Vaneigem then says “Aren’t most of the trivial incidents of everyday life like this ridiculous adventure? but in an attenuated and diluted form, reduced to the duration of a step, a glance, a thought, experienced as a muffled impact, a fleeting discomfort barely registered by consciousness and leaving in the mind only the dull irritation at a loss to discover its own origin?”
Continue reading Devastating Looks: Smirks, Quirks and Judicial Authority →

Law

Women, Muslims & Other Backward Castes

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The staple that one grew up on, was the idea, that WE, the people of India, had through a consensus, decided to constitute ourselves into a nation – a secular, democratic, Socialist (as an after thought perhaps, once Gharibi had been hataoed) republic. One was told that the Executive, the legislature and the Judiciary were the pillars that kept a check on each other, thus ensuring that every one was kept in their place, and the pulls and pressures exerted by each on the other two were built into the state structure in order that every one stayed on the straight and narrow.

All this was however soon forgotten to be replaced by the lived experience of the machinations of an uncaring and callous executive and a by and large insensitive legislature. The only hope now was the Judiciary, the third pillar of parliamentary democracy, and one waited with baited breath for the honourable courts to deliver this nation of a billion and more from the collective mess in which the other two had placed the people of the largest democracy in the world.

Judicial activism became the proverbial straw that one clutched at and hoped for more such straws to keep a destitute nation afloat.

Continue reading Women, Muslims & Other Backward Castes →

Law, Right watch

Amnesty report on the fifth anniversary of the Gujarat carnage

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Here. (.pdf)

1. The direct victims of that violence and their relatives continue to face serious challenges and obstacles in securing justice;

2. An overwhelming number of the criminal cases relating to the Gujarat violence remain un-investigated and unresolved, or closed with the result that the majority of he perpetrators of the violence have gone unpunished and remain at large in the state – this is despite the reopening of 1,594 cases for reinvestigation after the Supreme Court of India (Supreme Court) order in August 2004;

3. The plight of those internally displaced from their homes as a result of the violence is continuing one. As many as 5,000 families are living in “relief colonies” without basic amenities or official recognition from the Government of Gujarat. The Government of Gujarat however continues to assert that all those displaced as a result of the violence have been rehabilitated;

4. Human rights defenders, tenaciously engaged in pursuing justice for the victims of the violence, face frequent harassment;

5. There is an ongoing practice of social and economic boycotting of Muslim communities in the state.

Law, Theory

The Judge, he holds that grudge

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He’s gonna call on you.
But he’s badly built
And he walks on stilts,
Watch out he don’t fall on you.”

Bob Dylan.

[Am posting this as an add on to Nivi’s excellent piece on Judicial despotism. It was written at the height of Delhi’s sealing drive, and was first posted in Frontline.]

Lord Krishna stared at Maya Danav – the demon of illusions and the greatest architect on earth- and asked him to design an imperial court that would “excel all those on earth”. Then, according to the Mahabharata, Maya Danav planned out a 90,000 square foot plot of land and so was built Indraprastha – the first mythical city of Delhi and earliest illusion of the “world class city”. Centuries later, Delhi’s most recent attempt at planning has proved to be less poetic to the point of bluntness. In its most recent ruling on 28 April 2006, the Supreme Court observed that the sealing of commercial properties in residential areas must go on, and that “a policy of appeasement” had lead to “systemic failure” of planning in the city.

Continue reading The Judge, he holds that grudge →

Law, Theory

Contempt of Democracy: Time for Judicial Reform

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What would you call an institution that can overturn any policy adopted by democratically accountable governments; whose decisions are final, and cannot be reconsidered in any other forum; and which can throw into prison anybody who criticizes it? What would you call this institution accountable to nobody but itself, which has the sole power to appoint its own members and the sole power to decide if one of its own is guilty of a misdemeanour?

In India you would call it the Judiciary.
Cheered on vociferously by the freedom-loving media and its viewers/readers, the judiciary for about a decade, has been taking over more and more functions of government, until finally on January 11, 2007, the decisive judicial coup d’etat took place. By a judgement delivered on this day, the Supreme Court gave itself the power to strike down any law if it violates fundamental rights, resulting in the violation of the basic features of the Constitution. It is important to remember that constitutionally, no fundamental right is unconstrained, ‘reasonable restrictions’ being necessary to ensure that every citizen can enjoy these rights. Further, no right is beyond interpretation – does ‘right to equality’ entail affirmative action, for instance? There may be contradictions between fundamental rights; say between the right to equality of individual citizens and cultural rights of minorities. What exactly are the features that constitute the ‘basic features of the constitution’?

Continue reading Contempt of Democracy: Time for Judicial Reform →