Exemplary Role Of District Courts In Dispensing Justice And Protecting Human Rights

Another judgment dated 17th February, 2021 to have been heartily welcomed by one and all, from the general public to victims of silent sexual harassment, and to women's groups across the globe, is Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Ravinder Kumar Pandey's acquittal of journalist Priya Ramani in a criminal defamation case filed by former Editor and Union Minister M.J. Akbar. An editorial in the Indian Express describes it as an empowering judgment, a landmark for women's rights.

In an opinion piece in the Times of India, renowned journalist Namita Bhandare finds Ramani's acquittal "a victory for all Indian women". Namita Bhandare goes on to observe: "What was at stake was not just an individual complaint against a powerful former editor, or his retaliation with a defamation suit, but an entire ecosystem from the workplace to courts of law. Its an ecosystem designed by men to protect their own; an ecosystem where sexual abuse is routine since women must know their place; an ecosystem where sexual harassment at work is an 'open secret' and those who speak up must be punished."

Judge Pandey's order and its reasoning has torn up this entire "inviolable" ecosystem of male predators by holding that- for a woman victim of sexual harassment, there are no fetters of limitation for putting up her grievance on any platform. Moreover, the Priya Ramani order ruled that the right of reputation of the complainant (in defamation case) cannot be protected at the cost of the right of life and dignity of a woman. Truth is the woman's defense against defamation. The judge accepted Ramani's truth and that of her corroborative witnesses about the incident of sexual harassment at Oberoi Hotel Bombay in December 1993 when Ramani had gone there to meet Akbar for a job interview. The judge also accepted Ramani's narrative that Akbar is not a man of ''stellar" reputation, which he claimed to be. On all these grounds, Priya Ramani was acquitted and M.J. Akbar's criminal defamation case was dismissed.

On the scanner of recent and not too distant past, are two other district court judgments: ASJ Dharmender Rana's judgment dated 15th February, 2021 granting bail to the accused Devilal Burdak and Swaroop Ram charged with sedition and public mischief, in connection with Facebook posts during the farmers' protest, as these charges were false and none of the ingredients of sedition were satisfied. It is in this very judgment the Ld. ASJ calls out the police and the prosecution: "Don't invoke sedition to quieten Disquiet" .

Finally, we also refer to a Tis Hazari Court judgment of ASJ Dr. Kamani Lau dated 15th January 2020, when she granted bail to Ambedkarite and Dalit activist Bhim Army leader Chandrasekhar Azad for having called for violence by reading the preamble to the Constitution on the steps of the Jama Masjid in Delhi. The judge pointed out in this remarkable judgment that- reading the preamble of the Constitution is not an offence and certainly not a call to violence. The judgment was remarkable so far as it quoted Tagore's poem on "Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high" to underscore the struggle for the freedom of speech and expression and the right to peaceful protest as fundamental rights which the State cannot take away arbitrarily.

What is common to all the above four remarkable judgments is that all of them are district court judgments. The Constitution of India operative from 26th January, 1950, adopted under Articles 233 to 238, perceived a pyramidical hierarchical structure of its Judiciary, with the district court at the base, the High Courts in the middle and the Supreme Court at the apex. The makers of the Constitution thought such a judicial structure is fit for a large democracy like India. However, today 71 years later, so far as dispensation of justice is concerned, the pyramid appears to have been inverted and the district courts appear to be taking the lead.

Why denigrate by calling them Subordinate or Lower Judiciary? It may be more appropriate to put the different Courts at the same level. Because a spate of recent and not too distant events, landmark judgments have emanated from district courts, which make citizens proud. Except for bail for Varavara Rao and Nodeep Kaur passed by the High Courts. The Supreme Court remained by and large disinterested save the judgment of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and Indira Bannerji dated 11 November, 2020 in Arnab Goswami's case which brought Justice Krishna Iyer's dictum "Bail not jail, is the normal rule" to throbbing life on an everyday basis in the judiciary.

I am suddenly reminded of my own case, 36 years ago. I was arrested for writing a joint report on behalf of the Citizens for Democracy on Operation Bluestar, an army operation against Sikh militants at the Golden Temple at Amritsar. I had been charged with sedition and produced before CMM, G.P. Thareja who released and set me free after hearing Sr. Counsel Shanti Bhushan who, to my surprise, appeared for me in Tis Hazari district court, even though the Delhi High Court and Supreme Court had not allowed my bail applications.

As I send this article for publication, news trickles in that as if on cue from the Disha Ravi judgment, the Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul has dismissed a PIL by Rajat Sharma seeking to charge former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah, with sedition on the same ground taken in the grant of bail to Disha Ravi by a district judge- that disagreement and dissent from Government policy is not sedition so long as there is no call for violence. It seems to me that the hierarchy and structure of the Judiciary in India is undergoing a tumultuous churning for the dispensation of justice and for the protection of human rights