These Kind Of Judges Are Usually Given Post Retirement Jobs- Prashant Bhushan Goes One Step Ahead Of Sibal, Names Judges
After Kapil Sibal, Prashant Bhushan has now made statements targeting the Supreme Court and its Judges. Bhushan made the controversial remarks in a webinar hosted by the Indian American Muslim Council yesterday.
In the webinar that starts with "India Genocide News- weekly roundup", Himanshu Kumar, whose petition making allegations against the armed forces was recently dismissed by the Supreme Court with a cost of ₹ 5 Lakhs and Advocate Mihir Desai, an associate of Teesta Setalvad, also spoke.
"Justice Khanwilkar who has delivered these other three judgments, including Zakia Zafri, Himanshu Kumar, PMLA and he had delivered the Watali judgment, he has just retired. We don't know what post he will be given, there are many posts which are vacant. The chairmanship of the Law Commission, the Lokpal's post is also vacant. Let us see what post he is given. But we have seen from experience that these kind of judges who always side with the government, especially in judgments before their retirement are usually given some post-retirement jobs just like Justice Ranjan Gogoi, the Chief Justice who had delivered that Ayodhya judgment, who also delivered that Rafael judgment just before retirement and soon after retirement he was made a member of the Rajya Sabha", Bhushan said.
He also named retired Justice Arun Mishra in his talk while speaking about the Haren Pandya murder case. "Justice Arun Mishra who was another infamous judge who immediately or soon after retirement was made the chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, who was allowed to retain his official bungalow for nine months totally in violation of the rules and thereafter made the chairman of the Human Rights Commission," he said.
"In the recent year since the Narendra Modi government has come to power we have been seeing rampant trampling of rights of people, there is of course full-blooded assault on minorities in this country. There are lynch mobs out on the streets, there are lynch mobs on the social media, laws are being made to somehow reduce them to second-class citizens. All kinds of things are being done. There are fake encounters being done of Muslims, there are houses of Muslims being demolished just because they are protesting" Prashant Bhushan said.
Bhushan said that the Supreme Court has by and large abdicated its responsibility to protect the human rights and fundamental rights of citizens and has gone further in some cases to assault civil liberties of the citizens. "As I said, one of the reasons for this is the lure of the post-retirement jobs. But there are all kinds of reasons why the Supreme Court is behaving the way that it is. We are seeing that the independence of the Supreme Court is today seriously under question. Recently, Mr. Sibal said that he has lost faith in the Supreme Court and that is the feeling of a large number of citizens in this country", he said.
He clarified that we should not completely lose hope in the Supreme Court and that there are "still a large number of honest and upright judges" and that they should be given strength. He also said that by criticizing wrong actions, "those who are kind of becoming or have become virtually rubber stamps of the government" will be deterred.
Prashant Bhushan cited recent the orders of the Supreme Court granting bail to Mohammed Zubair, in the Pegasus case and Ajay Mishra's case as examples of good judgments of the Court.
Himanshu Kumar's remarks
Himanshu Kumar while speaking about the Salwa Judum said that "thousands of Adivasi women were raped by security forces" in Chhattisgarh. Speaking about the Apex Court's judgments in his case, he said that the Court accepted the prayer of the government to consider him a Naxal sympathiser, though the Court had declined to do so earlier in the same case.
According to him, the Apex Court has directed that "anyone who files a case against the atrocities of the security forces should be investigated upon and be put in jail". Now raising a voice against atrocities of security forces by default has become a criminal act after this judgment, he said.
Videos of Kapil Sibal's recent talk and a recent interview by Senior Advocate Dushyant Dave criticizing the Apex Court were played in the webinar.
Last week, while speaking at an event, Kapil Sibal had urged people to come out on the streets and protest and had said that if people are under the impression that they will get relief from the Supreme Court, they are mistaken.
Reacting to Sibal's remarks, Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju had termed the remarks "unfortunate and condemnable" and said that the way the Courts are being attacked poses a danger to the system itself.
"They don't believe in any kind of rule of law that is prevalent in the Country. They are so used to it. The Congress Party has been attacking the constitutional authorities from before. They disregard any kind of freedom or independence enjoyed by the constitutional authorities", the Miniter had said.
