Of Floggings , Demolitions & The Judiciary !

 

BY R.K.MISRA

The law may be an ass but it kicks butt. Thus it was that a bunch of  flog-happy cops who last October played God to handsome applause from their political bosses find themselves staring down the wrong end of the justice dispensing barrel now.

The Gujarat High Court was not a wee bit amused when a contempt of court application filed by some members of the minority community, arrested for stone pelting  and allegedly flogged in public came up before it this month. ”The application cannot be rejected without verification of facts, a division bench of Justices A.S.Supehia and M.R.Mengdey”,said while ordering an inquiry by the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Kaira district and directing that a pen drive  containing video and photographs of the incident  be made available to the judicial officer. They had been arrested for allegedly pelting stones at a garba in a village. A subsequent inquiry by the Inspector general of Police had , prima facie, brought out involvement of six of the 13  cops but was silent about  the role of the rest. The report has to be filed in three weeks and the matter comes up for hearing  on August 8. The applicants contention is that the cops committed contempt of court by flouting the Supreme Court’s directions.

Soon after a video of the flogging incident went viral, Gujarat Home Minister Harsh Sanghavi had appreciated and praised the state police for their action. ”The Gujarat police has done a nice job and the people should express their gratitude towards it on social media”, he has been quoted as saying in media reports. BJP general secretary, Pradipsinh Vaghela opined likewise .”If such things happen, the police should act similarly”, he went on record stating. Former IPS officer Kiran Bedi who was also Puducherry Lt. Governor till 2021,however slammed the Gujarat police for the public flogging. “The police cannot take the law into their hands”, she articulated on record. The utterance of  the Home minister who is a constitutional post holder, is  also fraught with a potential recoil effect if it comes within the ambit of a judicial evaluation.

This is not the sole case of public flogging by the Gujarat cops involving the minority community members. Last week(July 17),the Gujarat High Court issued notice to the state government for its reply on a PIL seeking an inquiry into a June 16 incident of public flogging of alleged rioters in the Junagadh mob violence.

The PIL by Lok Adhikar Manch and Minority Coordination Committee through advocate Anand Yagnik sought registration of an FIR against police personnel and officers responsible for the incident and for ransacking of moveable property of suspects  allegedly involved in the violence.

Violence broke out in Junagadh on June 16 following the issuance of demolition notice by local civic body to certain Islamic religious places on the ground that they were encroaching on public roads. Stone pelting erupted. A bystander was killed and some policemen injured. Arrests were made and  videos of the flogging of people in front of the dargah were circulated.

The Samast Sunni Muslim trust from Junagadh had filed three petitions after  notices were posted on the walls of  six different shrines on June 14 asking for ownerships papers or face demolition of structures. The objection was that  enough time had not been granted  to comply with the demands. Five to seven days was not enough time to produce documents pertaining to dargahs constructed in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, it was contended.

If it was the Junagadh civic body in Saurashtra suddenly waking up to  violations by age- old Islamic structures , it was around the same time that a village panchayat in North Gujarat’s Aravalli district woke up to issue a demolition notice to a century old dargah in Bhensvada village near Dhansura town stating that it was illegally constructed, encroaching on the village grazing ground and informing that the razing of the dargah would begin at 11 am on June 28. After villagers sought judicial intervention, the High Court ordered status quo even as it initiated judicial proceedings.

Earlier on May 11, in Dahod town of central Gujarat  portions of a century old Nagina masjid, three dargahs some shops and a temple devoted to Lord Ganesh were brought down alongside a rest house for pilgrims run by the Dawoodi Bohra community. The demolition, however did not acquire a communal colour though tension ran high.

The Nagina Masjid Dahod Trust said that the mosque had been in use since 1926 and was a Waqf property since 1954 with documentary evidence that it had been in existence since a century. The administration point of view was that the trust had been given a week to submit  documents ,failing which the mosque was demolished on May 19. The Trust had approached the High Court for urgent relief but since it was in vacation, it could not be taken up.

Whether it be the high handedness of the cops or the pursuit of a partisan agenda by the party in power, the judiciary still remains the last port of call for the distressed in search of justice.

This  column was published in the edition dated July 25,2023 of the respective newspapers whose links have been provided below.

PS.  On July 27, 2023 a division bench of the Gujarat High Court issued notice of contempt against 32 police officers and men for custodial violence including torture, beatings and public flogging of those arrested for violence after protests over a notice to demolish a dargah in Junagadh mid-June.

http://epaper.lokmat.com/articlepage.php?articleid=LOKTIME_NPLT_20230725_6_5

http://odishapostepaper.com/edition/4583/orissapost/page/9