Media silent on Katju charges

For those of you who follow former Supreme Court Justice and former Press Council of India (PCI) Chairman, Justice Katju on Facebook, you would have learnt two things over the last couple of months: first he’s holidaying in the US with family and second he’s making very serious allegations of corruption against the sitting Chief Justice of India H.L. Dattu.

There is more than a murmur in the blogosphere and smaller news portals on the silence of the mainstream media on the issue. Katju has claimed in a Facebook post that he has passed on this information to the legal correspondent of the Times of India and that he has not published the story.

Let’s not forget that, last year, when Katju was the PCI Chairman, the Times of India gave him prime space on its edit pages to make allegations of corruption against a deceased, former judge of the Madras High Court.

Those allegations by Katju and the resulting furore in Parliament were used as stepping stones by the Modi government to amend the Constitution to bring in the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) replacing the 20 year old collegium system of judicial appointments.

The NJAC is currently under challenge before the Supreme Court. CJI Dattu has refused to take part in the selection of the ‘eminent persons’ who form a part of the NJAC, until his brother judges rule on the constitutionality of the NJAC.

The government has not taken very kindly to this behaviour and the Attorney General had demanded before the five judge bench hearing the constitutionality challenge that the CJI be ‘directed’ to attend the meetings to choose the two  ‘eminent persons’ who form a part of the NJAC.

Given that almost every mainstream media outlet covered Katju’s allegations last year, one does wonder why nobody in the mainstream media is reporting on his present allegations against the sitting CJI. Are they scared of the CJI? Or of being charged with defamation or contempt?

For his part Katju isn’t very happy with the silence on the issue and has declared that he is “here by presenting choodis to the following categories of people who have turned a Nelson's eye to Dattu's massive corruption”. You can read the entire list on his blog over here.

However, the silver lining to this story is that we are finally living in a world where at least retired Supreme Court judges can publicly accuse sitting judges of the Supreme Court of blatant corruption and not be hauled to jail for contempt of court.

This is no small victory. Eight years ago, when Mid-day reported on allegations of corruption against a former Chief Justice of India, its journalists and a cartoonist were sentenced to jail for contempt of court by the Delhi High Court.

The Supreme Court stayed the convictions but the wrath of judicial intolerance was there for everybody to see. Just earlier this year, in a ridiculously disproportionate and blatantly illegal judgment, the Supreme Court sent a man from Kerala to jail for four weeks for calling judges “sumbhan” which apparently means “idiot” in Malyalam. I’ve explained other such contempt cases on the Hoot over here.

So, for Justice Katju to accuse the sitting CJI of corruption and not be served with a contempt notice, is indeed a big leap for the Indian judiciary – maybe they are finally open to the idea of some public scrutiny and criticism. 

 

(The writer is a Delhi-based lawyer).

 

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