POPULAR HUNT FOR JUSTICE IN THE JUNGLE OF THE INDIAN JUDICIARY
Sumanta Banerjee
The Indian judiciary is keeping pace with the fast speed at which the other institutions in India are declining. The Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant on July 22 , refused to initiate suo motu proceedings to take cognizance of alleged police atrocities against student protestors in Delhi on July 20.
While dismissing a lawyer’s request for such proceedings, the CJI said: “Don’t waste our time, and don’t waste your time.” When the lawyer offered to show videos of police personnel assaulting unarmed protestors, he retorted: “We are not interested in videos. We don’t have time to watch them.”
When this behavior of the CJI drew widespread criticism, to mollify the critics perhaps, on September 9, in a rare gesture of courage, he came down heavily on the Greater Noida executive magistrate for issuing notice to a student for taking part in the CJP (Cockroach Janta Party)-led protest march in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. He expressed displeasure at the magistrate’s act, saying how he could dare issue such a notice when the apex court had earlier directed that no penal action would be taken against the students.
The CJI is apparently trying to rehabilitate himself in the public mind, after having suffered severe damage to his reputation as a judge. He had already reduced himself to the position of a laughing stock by terming youth protestors as `cockroaches’ – a term readily adopted by the protestors who used it to hit him back. It was a slap on his self-promoted bloated image.
The habit of uttering irresponsible comments and of passing verdicts that fail to pass the test of justice is not is not confined to our CJI, but is becoming a wide spread tendency among the members of the judiciary. As it is, the Indian judiciary’s acts have frequently been marked by erroneous verdicts, and has been further flawed recently by allegations of corruption against some judges. Further, most of the judges in their verdicts have been bending over backwards to placate executive authorities and their political bosses. When a few years ago, three academics dared to expose these misdeeds of judges, they were hauled up by the apex court for writing about corruption in the judiciary, in the social studies text book of NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) for Class VIII. The apex court behaved in a manner as if the judiciary was a touch-me-not fairy, flying above all clouds of suspicion, as if judges had never been caught off-guard in their delivery of verdicts, or behavior in courts.
Judges need to judge themselves
It is about time that judges come down from their self-designated puffed up benches to the earth and empathize with the common people. They should acknowledge their own deficiencies and frailties which are common to all. They are themselves often guilty of the very types of crimes on which they are supposed to sit on judgment. The most shocking case was that of the discovery of bags of unaccounted cash among burnt remains after a fire broke out at the residence of Justice Yashwant Varma in March, 2025. The judge failed to explain the unearthing of the cash. Some judges betray pro-Establishment bias in favour of members of the ruling party and their own class, religion or caste, while some pass verdicts that show their vindictive mindset against those who dare to protest against the oppressive policies of the Indian state. To take two recent instances, a Rightwing Hindu activist Swatantra Bharadwaj, arrested for spreading communal hatred was granted bail by the Patiala House Court, while Umar Khalid, the social activist who protested against the Modi government’s discriminatory policies has been languishing behind bars for the last several years.
To start with, according to data presented in the Lok Sabha in February 2026, over 8,600 complaints were filed against sitting judges over the past decade. Among other acts miscarriage of justice, they are guilty of keeping a backlog of 47 million pending cases in the lower courts. Besides, there are allegations of unethical, illegal or biased practices, bribery, undue influence of clients, or their collusion with the clients.
Before hauling up academics, social activists and dissenters professors for protesting and accusing them of breach of conduct, the honourable judges might do well to take a look inside their own cupboards, out of which sometimes unpleasant secrets tumble out. Let us take a few glaring examples. Justice R.K. Mittal of the Railways Claims in Patna orchestrated a massive Rs 50 crore fraud in death compensation claims. In complicity with a group of five lawyers, he siphoned of funds meant for victims of railway accidents. A mysterious incident took place in the house of Justice Yashwant Verma in Delhi on March 14, 2025. A fire broke out, and a huge amount of cash was discovered within the debris of the fire accident. Till now, the honourable judge has not yet explained the source of the unaccounted cash – which was disproportionate to the amount he earned as a regular judge. Rajasthan High Court’s acting chief justice Sanjeev Prakash Sharma has recently been accused by Supreme Court judge Sandeep Mehta of “maladministration,” “malpractices,” “nepotism,” and “favouritsm.” In spite of writing four letters to the Chief Justice of India (CJI), Mehta has not yet received any response from the latter regarding steps to be taken against the errant judge.
Egregious judgments
Sitting atop the highest pedestal, and protected by legal immunity, the judges face no accountability. Irresponsible and unfair verdicts delivered by them go unchallenged, as few victims of such injustice have the means to oppose them in higher courts. Part of the same despicable system that hosts our ruling party and other politicians, patronizes the underworld goons who are used in internecine strife, presides over division of spoils, and loots the poor, the judges are hardly expected to behave in any other way. Their verdicts smack of misogyny when it comes to cases of men-women conflict. To quote a recent instance, the Bombay High Court on September 7, set aside the death penalty awarded to a man for the rape and murder of a 24 year old female physiotherapist in December 2016. Incidentally, the high court that passed the judgement, was headed by two female judges – indicating how misogynist bias has seeped into the mindset of even women members of the judiciary. On the same day, September 7, the Jharkhand High Court came out with a bizarre statement saying that entering a woman’s house at night and trying to lift her clothes did not amount to an attempt to rape. It therefore reduced the earlier sentence passed against a man accused of that crime, from four years of rigorous imprisonment to eight months of simple imprisonment – a period which he had already spent in police custody. He thus walked out free. In yet another case, T. Raja Singh, a BJP MLA from Telengana was acquitted on June 30, 2026, after having been accused of making offensive comments against the Prophet some four years ago. Soon after, on September 7, the Bombay high court set aside the death penalty awarded to a man for the rape and murder of a 24-year old physiotherapist in December 2016, `setting him at liberty.’ (The Times of India. September 8, 2026). Such verdicts are in continuation of the scandalous Mathura judgment of the Supreme Court in 1979, which acquitted two policemen who were accused of raping a minor Adivasi girl called Mathura.
Judges also bend over backwards to appease the powerful when a company cheats ordinary citizens. An instance of the latter is the recent allegation about an officer of the BARC (Bhaba Atomic Research Centre) conspiring with the pharmaceutical company Sanon India to procure medicines from it at inflated prices and in quantities exceeding the requirement. (Re: The Times of India. September 8, 2026). Similarly, in cases of disputes between industrial houses and their workers over the latter’s demand for higher wages and better working conditions, judges quite often tend to lean on the side of the former.
The egregious record of Indian judges passing verdicts that placate the government, has reduced the Indian judiciary to the position of a court jester in India and a pariah in the global community of judges. A report released by the International Commission of Jurists in January, 2025 commenting on the performance of Indian judges, draws attention to the following failures: “…lack of predetermined and objective criteria and deficit of transparency, whether in matters of selection and appointment or transfer of judges or judicial accountability…”
Urgent need to salvage the Indian judiciary
It is high time that the judiciary undergoes a drastic surgery to restore its spine. To start with, it has to purge itself of incompetent and errant judges, many among whom have been accused of sentencing innocent people to jail, who were later to be acquitted by some other judge or a superior bench of seniors. Further, it is necessary to expedite the process of delivering justice by removing judges who delay passing verdicts leading to unnecessary harassment of innocent citizens. The other abominable practice indulged in by many judges is the habit of denying bail to deserving citizens, leaving them languishing behind bars for years. The unending ordeal from which the political activist Omar Khalid and his comrade Sharjil Imam continue to suffer is one such instance. Since such injudicious verdicts amount to crimes, the guilty judges should be debarred from the judicial services, and punished in a manner (if necessary, even through extreme steps like imprisonment) that would deter other judges from repeating the same offence.
The roots of these injudicious verdicts lie in the manner in which judges are appointed in India. There is no transparency in their recruitment, which is quite often stained by nepotism, favouritism, and political leanings of the ruling party and executive. Unless these flaws are eradicated at the roots, the Indian judiciary will remain a flawed institution.
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