May 31, 2019 Friday
Bedtime Story
The Human Apes Behind the Judiciary
Of course, they were loath to speak out the
naked truth about the Chief Justices and other Judges of lower courts engaging
in direct corruption but then all truths need not be spelt out.
Yet there have been instances of a few rare
judges who have come out of their closet or rather stepped down from their
elevated pedestals post-retirement and spoken candidly about the rot in the
system where they were engaged in for decades.
One of such rare gem of an outspoken judge
was Justice Ruma Pal who was the judge of the Supreme Court of India from
January 28 of 2000 to June 2 of 2006.
She was promoted from her previous position
of Calcutta High Court Judge where her tenure lasted for 10 years which gives
her in total a generous numbers of years of experience in higher and the
highest judiciary of India.
My own personal experience in the courts is
that in general the working advocates and the officers of the courts have a
fair idea of the character, integrity and academic discipline of abidance to
the sacrosanct principle of common law/judicial precedent of each individual
judge.
The judges are as human as it gets with
each one having his or her character and personality and subjective view of the
world that often casts its shadow on their decision making.
For instance in my personal encounters with
at least fifteen or even more judges at various levels ranging from district consumer
forums to metropolitan magistrates to judges of civil and sessions courts to
High Court judges I have seen various degrees of liberality in granting bails
to accused for the same charges in the same FIR.
Some are extremely liberal in granting bail
to the accused on the ground that no under trial should be spending a single
day in either police or judicial custody no matter how heinous the crime allegedly
committed by the accused.
Then on the other hand there are judges who
are strongly swayed by the severity of the cases where there had been brutal
murder, dastardly and horrifying acts of gang rape and murder, sexual offenses
against children or some major public tragedy which had led to loss of several
lives such as a fire in a restaurant or collapse of an overhead foot bridge where
just the nature of the crime or the high number of casualties sways the judge
into rejecting the bail applications of the accused by the prosecution.
While law has been designed to be objective
and to follow its precedent human apes in the form of judges bring along with
them their own subjectivity and arbitrariness that sometimes surprises even the
most seasoned advocates.
But subjectivity apart, at the fifth V M
Tarkunde Memorial Lecture that was delivered on November 10, 2011 (at the
height of the alleged $40 billion 2G spectrum scam by the politicians and
government officers under the coalition government of United Progressive
Alliance) the former judge of the Supreme Court Ruma Pal highlighted several deficiencies
that are pervasive in the higher judiciary of India.
By the way, this was one of the many
corruptions scandals under the coalition government of the Congress party that would destroy the
future political prospects of the Indian National Congress, give them a crushing
defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha or the General Elections and change the political
landscape of the country forever.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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