Eleven international scholars have urged the Supreme Court to take suo motu notice of the fallout of the Zakia Jafri judgement, expunge the “derogatory” remarks contained in it, and to dismiss the cases against co-petitioner Teesta Setalvad and witness R.B. Sreekumar, who have been arrested “on the strength of these remarks”.
In June, Ms. Setalvad and Mr. Sreekumar were arrested by the Ahmedabad Crime Branch after a First Information Report (FIR) was registered against them for allegedly fabricating documents to frame innocent people in the 2002 Gujarat riots related cases.
In a statement released by non-government organisation SAHMAT, the scholars said: “We, the undersigned members of the academic community, are deeply disturbed by some of the recent judgments of the Indian Supreme Court, which have a direct bearing on the future of civil liberties and human rights in India. We wish to draw attention, in particular, to the judgment in the Zakia Jafri case, which raises three disturbing questions.”
“First, since the petitioners had challenged the findings of the SIT report that gave a clean chit to the Gujarat government for the riots following the Godhra incident, and asked the Supreme Court to order an independent investigation, for the Court to dismiss their appeal on the basis of the very same impugned SIT report seems to us to be unjust,” it said.
The letter said: “Second, while dismissing their appeal, the Court has quite gratuitously and wholly unfairly attributed ulterior motives to the petitioners. This has even emboldened the executive to arrest co-petitioner Teesta Setalvad, along with witness R.B. Sreekumar, both of whom have also been denied bail. If any patient, prolonged, peaceful, and entirely legitimate pursuit of justice through the due process, is called ‘keeping the pot boiling’, then this remark, quite apart from being offensive, discourages people from approaching the Court on any matter relating to excesses or dereliction on the part of the executive.”
“Third, the Court has passed these uncalled-for obiter dicta without even giving a hearing to those against whom these remarks are directed; this sets an unfortunate precedent in jurisprudence,” it said.
Stating that apart from the Emergency period, the Indian Supreme Court had generally played an honourable role in defending the democratic commitments of the country, the scholars said “which is why we are dismayed by the recent tendency discernible in the Zakia Jafri judgment”.
According to the statement, its signatories are Bhiku Parekh, House of Lords (London); Noam Chomsky, Prof. Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Prof., University of Arizona (U.S.); Prof. Arjun Appadurai of Max Planck Institute (Germany); Prof. Wendy Brown of Institute of Advanced Studies, Princeton (U.S.); Prof. Emeritus Sheldon Pollock and Profs. Carol Rovane and Akeel Bilgrami of Columbia University (U.S.); Prof. Emeritus Charles Taylor of McGill University (Canada); Prof. Martha Nussbaum of University of Chicago (U.S.); and Profs. Robert Pollin and Gerald Epstein of University of Massachusetts (U.S.).
