By Arun Shourie
We are reproducing a series of articles by Arun Shourie published in the Indian
Express to show how Supreme Court Judges in India act as handmaids of the government and pervert the judicial and constitutional process to further the political interests of the ruling party. World Sikh News has all along maintained that the reports of all such commissions are written by the Prime Minister’s Secretariat and the judges merely sign them. That’s why Sikhs have lost faith in the Indian Judiciary.
WITH their report on the Fairfax matter, M.P. Thakkar and S. Natarajan have joined the ranks of P.D. Kudal and Ranganath Mishra that is, of commissioners who have brought the very institution of Commissions of Inquiry into contempt. In conducting the inquiry and in writing the report they have, of course, functioned merely as commissioners they invariably and insistently exempted themselves during the hearings from what would have fallen to their lot as judges to decide but the fact that they are sitting judges of the Supreme Court makes the contempt they have brought on Commissions of Inquiry all the greater. That fact also compounds the injustice they have inflicted on persons whose reputation and honor they have besmirched without evidence, on persons who are facing trials and on whose guilt not only have these two sitting judges of the Supreme Court pronounced but on whose guilt they have pronounced without so much as hearing them.
The hearings, the record, and most of all their report shows that these two commissions have:
* Violated wantonly, to use one of their favorite words the statute under which they were to function, as well as settled law and Precedent.
* Suppressed facts that were brought on the record to them;
* Prevented witnesses from putting to them facts which were central to the issues they were examining but which would have blown the miasma which, it is even clearer in retrospect than it was during the hearings, they were out to conjure, up;
* Distorted what in spite of them was put to them;
* Smeared reputations without evidence;
* Adopted a method of weighing evidence for which only one word is apt that it is perverse.
These facts should be sufficient to destroy the report and ‘I do hope that the obvious way will be taken to have the courts examine the report. But in spite of their exertions their thesis as against their adjectives will not help the government, It falls by its contradictions contradictions which the commissioners just could not have ironed out without damaging what the government itself has been proclaiming.
While it may not provide sufficient solace to the government, therefore, the report will provide not just solace but cheer to one lot the lot which has been defrauding the country by stashing money abroad. For the prescription that these commissioners furnish constitutes a complete guarantee to every offender that he will never be caught. All that these dacoits in business suits have to do now is to ensure that the government accepts the report in its entirety. And that should not be difficult. Who after all, could fault a government for doing what two sitting judges of the Supreme Court have asked to do?
Article extracted from this publication >> January 1, 1988
