DID THE SUPREME COURT EVER CALL MODI A MODERN DAY NERO? - TopicsExpress

DID THE SUPREME COURT EVER CALL MODI A MODERN DAY NERO? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ When we are approaching the general elections to the Lok Sabha, I think it would be worth looking into the circumstances under which two judges of the Supreme Court said that “The modern day Neros were looking elsewhere when Best Bakery and innocent children and helpless women were burning” . Though the SC did not name Mr. Modi personally, the stigma stuck and the “secular” brigades have been using the same very freely to personally attack Mr.Modi. Mr. Modi, however has never even once said anything against the honourable court and the judges, despite that singing, but veiled personal attack against him. He has always maintained that he had full faith in the Judiciary and have always taken only the legal route even while appealing the higher courts against any lower court verdicts. The above remark was passed by Justice Doraiswami Raju and Yustice Arijit Pasayat, while passing a verdict quashing the judgments by the trial court and the Gujarat High Court who had acquitted all 21 accused in the case for want of conclusive evidence. The SC also ordered transfer of the case to a trial court in Mumbai, giving in to the allegations of the victims’ lawyer, the infamous Teesta Setalvad. After re-trial, 9 of the 21 accused were sentenced for life imprisonment. Appeals were filed by all those convicted in the Mumbai HC and following is a report related to this case, which had appeared in the Indian Express dt. 22 April, 2011. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ INDIAN EXPRESS » Story Best Bakery witness says she was forced to lie in the Posted: Fri Apr 22 2011, 19:07 hrs As the appeals filed by the nine convicts in the 2002 Best Bakery case are pending before the Bombay High Court, a key prosecution witness, Shaikh Yasmeen Banu, has claimed that she was “lured and misguided” by social activist Teesta Setalvad into giving a false testimony. “Teesta Setalvad made me give false testimony in the Best Bakery case by luring and misguiding me. I had written everything in the affidavit submitted to the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court in June last year,” Yasmeen said in a statement issued earlier this week. Yasmeen was the only prosecution witness from the Shaikh family who stood by the polices case against the 17 accused. The rest of the family, including prime witness and Yasmeens sister-in-law Zaheera Shaikh, had turned hostile, alleging that they were forced by Setalvad to lie. In her affidavit dated June 17, 2010, Yasmeen has stated that her deposition before the trial court was made at the behest of Setalvad. According to Yasmeen, one Rais Khan, who is a close associate of Setalvad, had met her along with local Muslim leaders claiming that her life was in danger in Gujarat and she should shift to Mumbai where she would be taken care of. “Setalvad and Rais promised to help me. I am leading a poor and miserable life. My affidavit should be treated as a petition. I dont want to say anything more,” Yasmeens statement reads. Apart from the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, Yasmeens affidavit has also been sent to the Chief Justice of India, Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission and Director General of Police, Gujarat. In February 2006, the sessions court here sentenced nine accused to life imprisonment. The court later tried and convicted Zaheera and others who had turned hostile for perjury. Fourteen people who had taken refuge in the Best Bakery - owned by the Shaikh family - in Vadodara were killed on March 1, 2002, during the post-Godhra riots. 1. Based on the above reports, I think it would be safe to presume that the Supreme Court issued the order to transfer the cases purely on the basis of initial statements of the victims and the media reports and not on any hard evidence. 2. By ordering the transfer of that case outside the Gujarat, the SC judges had indirectly questioned and tarnished the image of the entire Judiciary in the state. 3. It is also safe to presume that the conviction of those 9 accused by the Mumbai trial court was influenced by the SC’s outrageous remarks, which was given wide publicity in the media even before the commencement of the trial in the Maharasthtra court. What if the trial court judges wanted to avoid the SC’s ire by giving any verdict which concurred with the Gujarat trial court and HC verdicts and chose to give a verdict which would have pleased the SC even after all except one prosecution witness from the victim’s family “turned hostile”? Based on the above, I think, the remarks were a clear case of what is usually called “Judicial over-reach” and the then SC judges grossly crossed the limits of jurisprudence and were over-reacting based on the media reports. They did not have even the least bit of consideration that such sweeping remarks would be widely used to defame the constitutionally and democratically elected Chief Minister of state, who himself is a Constitutional authority like the SC judges. And, all of you have seen how devastatingly this remark of those SC judges were use by the anti-Modi propagandists to their advantage in their vilification campaign against Mr. Modi!! Though the SC remarks had not mentioned Mr. Modi’s name anywhere in their remarks, their remarks were being quoted as,” The Supreme Court had called Mr. Modi a modern day Nero.” This is no less damaging than wrongly alleging that the entire Muslim community in India are terrorists and traitors for the acts of some “misguided” persons.