<\/a>A screenshot of Jethmalani’s letter<\/p><\/div>\n
The recent outburst of senior advocate Ram Jethmalani, in an open letter to Justice Karnan (see picture), is a case in point. It is a letter that, under normal circumstances, would have been taken as an affront to the judiciary and would have called for censure from the bench. No reaction is, so far, available from the bench on this letter.<\/p>\n
The letter in itself was totally uncalled for, because as Jethmalani himself has admitted, \u201cI have never met you nor even heard about you\u2026\u201d but then he goes on to say: \u201cI am sorry to tell you that I am convinced you have lost your mind. You behaviour is that of a lunatic and some day that may be the only defence available to you though with no bright chance of success.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nOne would wonder what the result would be, if any lawyer, of whichever standing, or an ordinary citizen for that matter, had written such a letter to any other high court judge of the country. Would not contempt proceedings be brought against that lawyer?<\/span><\/p>\nJethmalani also says: \u201c…humbly pray for pardon for every stupid action you have so far indulged in.”<\/span><\/p>\nThis has to be studied in three parts. First, the law-abiding citizen would like to see how the judiciary deals with one of its own, and how it provides even a judge a fair trial. Can a judge\u2014or any citizen for that matter\u2014be declared a law-breaker because he\/she refused to appear for a contempt hearing? If so, then the law is being justly and equally embalmed.<\/span><\/p>\nSecondly, would not Justice Karnan be deemed innocent till proved guilty? If at this point nothing has been proved against him\u2014certainly no crime\u2014how was it possible for a senior lawyer to cast serious personal aspersions on a member of the bench? This is not to condone the actions of the judge in question (Justice Karnan), but to question the action of a lawyer, who is no more a civilian than any one of us, even if he is attached to the judicial system.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd third, if discipline is a matter imposed only on non-judicial civilians, then would the constitution condone that act? What is the mechanism of redress available to the ordinary citizen in the case of an emotional outburst following a judgement that he or she or his or her family fails to comprehend and\/or feels has not been fair? Does the accused have access to redressal, other than approach a higher court, which involves cost? If not, should Jethmalani be so unique a human being that his letter can be overlooked?<\/span><\/p>\nThe Justice Katju case<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nThis brings to mind the call for contempt of Justice Markandey Katju. Not only was he a former judge of the Supreme Court, he is also the former Chairman, Press Council of India, both extremely authoritative positions. He has been known to be outspoken, a trait that got him in trouble.<\/span><\/p>\nIn the Soumya rape and murder case\u2014where the culprit Govindachamy assaulted and then raped the 23-year-old in the empty ladies coach of a moving train before allegedly pushing her off the train, killing her\u2014the Supreme Court had refused to give capital punishment to Govindachamy. It upheld his life sentence instead, overturning the Kerala High Court\u2019s death sentence of 2013.<\/span><\/p>\nThe incident was almost as gruesome as the Delhi Nirbhaya case, though the assailant was just one, but the issue of his pushing Soumya off the train could not be proved. That was the primary reason why the Supreme Court stopped before capital punishment.<\/span><\/p>\nThe judgement created heartbreak in Kerala and Justice Katju said in a Facebook entry that the apex court had \u201cgrievously erred\u201d by not imposing death penalty. Katju said it was \u201cregrettable\u201d that the court has not read Section 300 carefully.<\/span><\/p>\nIn October 2016, the apex court summoned Justice Katju and issued a contempt notice for criticizing the judge and not the judgement. To this, Justice Katju had said: \u201cMr (Justice) Gogoi don’t threaten me. Do what you want. I am not scared.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThe incident got serious when Justice Katju kept reminding the Judge (Gogoi) that he (Katju) was senior to him. At one point the bench called for security, saying: \u201cIs there anyone to escort Justice Katju out of court?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nIn January this year Justice Katju had to submit an unconditional apology to the court at which contempt proceedings were dropped.<\/span><\/p>\nIf that was the case of a former Supreme Court Judge, casting personal insults on a sitting high court judge might be considered a serious case, especially when the judge in question is yet to be proven guilty of any crime other than contempt of court.<\/span><\/p>\nHow does advocate Ram Jethmalani stand?<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I am convinced you have lost your mind, writes senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani to CS Karnan, sitting High Court justice By Sujit Bhar The Justice CS Karnan case has stirred the legal community like no other. It has not only made the bench jittery, starting from the lower judiciary to the topmost office of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":11741,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497,2046],"tags":[2639,2637,2640,2638],"yst_prominent_words":[],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Ram-Jethmalani.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11739"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11739"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=11739"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=11739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}