The Cases that India Forgot — A really short book, one that discusses 9 different cases decided by the Supreme court and 1 decided by the Bombay high court that are considered significant.
To say that these are cases that India forgot might be a stretch since cases like Minerva mills v Union of India, Rameshwar Prasad v Union of India are pretty well known and keep popping up in references every other day. Even the Bajaj v KPS Gill case was widely discussed by the media.
Overview of The Book
Each case takes a few pages at most and is more like a summary than a detailed description of what happened. If you’re looking for a more in-depth analysis, then this book isn’t it. But it’s a good collection of cases.
One of the things I want to talk about is the sharp contrast in the outcomes of two court cases. In the case of Tukaram v State of Maharastra (Mathura case), two policemen raped a tribal girl in the police station and the supreme court acquitted both of them and made disgusting statements that conflated absence of injury with consent. Ignoring that a person under police custody cannot even be considered to have consented, the court also ignored every principle of common sense or justice in this case.
Contrast this with the Bajaj v KPS gill case where Bajaj a senior government officer was slapped on her arse by KPS gill. She won the case all the way to the supreme court, despite the supreme court letting KPS Gill off with a small fine and overturning his 3-month imprisonment sentence given by the lower court.
It is rare for those who aren’t privileged or well off to get justice in India because the system is stacked against them. Another interesting fact is the coverage of the ‘liberal English media’ (The Hindu, Indian Express, Deccan Herald) on the Bajaj v Gill case. one would have thought they would have taken the side of Bajaj, but they were full of sympathy for KPS Gill and his ‘misfortune’ and were interested in praising his role in clearing the militancy in Punjab and felt it was the injustice that he was being punished by the courts for a different crime. Even Tavleen Singh defended Gill and tried to portray this as an over-reaction by Bajaj.
After the horrible judgement by the supreme court in the Mathura case, there were huge protests by women and massive outcry by civil society. Then the Supreme court in a face-saving measure decided to issue future guidelines by not requiring corroborating evidence (other than the statement of the victim) for such cases by making an even more Retarded justification behind those guidelines.
>>>The court reasoned its decision on the basis that Indian women were different from women in the ‘Western World’, and were unlikely to concoct an allegation of sexual assault. Women in the West could be driven by economic motives, ‘psychological neurosis’, vengeance or jealousy to fabricate allegations. An Indian woman, conscious of the ‘danger of being ostracised’, the ‘reflect[tion] on her chastity’ and other factors, was unlikely to do so.
The book also mentions cases like Naga People’s movement of Human rights v Union of India which talks about how the supreme court did not do anything to declare AFSPA unconstitutional or even dilute some of its guidelines in light of egregious human rights violations being committed. The Court also did nothing to fight for the rights of citizens against the draconian TADA act which was being misused by the police to file cases against anyone they wanted to target. In many cases, if they were angry that someone got bail, they would slap a TADA case.
We are seeing a parallel of that currently with the BJP government using NSA act to throw people like Dr Kafeel Khan or Sharjeel into prison.
One point I’d like to make is that in the case of the TADA, it was not the Supreme court that helped protect the citizen but the PV Narasimha Rao government which set up an NHRC commission. They did not do this because they cared about the citizens but because they were worried about an international backlash on the rampant custodial deaths/torture/human rights violations in India.
So sometimes it is a good thing for people around the world to raise their voice on issues anywhere and hope that those governments at least pretend to care about their image and do something. Instead of crying about outsiders interfering, maybe it is a good idea to focus on what they are saying and whether there is merit to it than focusing on who is speaking out. International pressure has been instrumental in helping the cause of human rights across the world.
About the Author: The Cases that India Forgot
Dr. Chintan Chandrachud is an associate in Quinn Emanuel’s London office which he joined the firm in 2016. His practice deals with matters on complex commercial litigation, tax litigation and international arbitration.
He possesses a PhD from the University of Cambridge on the subject of judicial review in India and the United Kingdom. His academic qualifications include postgraduate degrees from Oxford and Yale. He is also the author of Balanced Constitutionalism: Courts and Legislatures in India and the United Kingdom.
