From: Dr Hiren Gohain <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2021, 20:50
Subject: Stan Swamy's Martyrdom
Please share if you like it.,Thanks and regards.
Hiren Gohain.
JUDICIARY ON TRIAL
(Hiren Gohain)
Justice must have a heart.It cannot be just an arena for legal
pedantry and fireworks,though that unfortunately has been the case since
the rise of Rhetoric in ancient Greece.If one does not FEEL the
pain,suffering and loss an injustice causes,the outward demeanour of calm
objectivity makes little sense.CJI Ramana had inspired some hope that we
have left behind the long period of stony silence as the government
pretended and the highest court in the land agreed that all was well as the
thousands of migrant workers were trekking hundreds of miles on foot under
a scorching sun without food and water.But what did we actually witness in
the case of Father Stan Swamy?
When he felt the end was near,and the grinding wheels of
institutional torment would find ways of circumventing his bail plea on
specious grounds,he made a direct heart-felt appeal to the bench of the
High Court to let him die in peace and some dignity.I think anybody can
feel the resignation and the absolute sincerity of that final and direct
appeal.But the court unbelievably decided to send him back to the hospital
where he breathed his last.Only one act of the court has some grace,it
transferred him from an hospital where he thought he was receiving poor
treatment.But post-Covid complications have usually proved fatal.And on
retrospect it is clear he knew the end was near.How did this fact not
register?
Let us come to the brass tacks.He would probably have escaped
cruel fate had he not been charged and arrested under the UAPA act and
exposed to Covid 19 in prison Arrests and detention under this act have
been visibly bizarre and sadistic.
People have been accused of plotting to murder the Prime Minister, no less,
and organizing a massive armed rebellion against the state, on the basis of
digital files said to be recovered from laptops of one or two
accused.Father Stan Swamy repeatedly pleaded before court that no proof was
produced before the court to link him to the suggested plots except mention
in those files which have now definitely come under a cloud.But no,that
would not cut any ice.Why?Because the top security agency of the state was
on oath saying that 'the matters are very serious'.
Now a leading forensic laboratory of the world has examined the
files and detected use of malware to infiltrate laptops and insinuate
'incriminating documents'.This is a firm with proven integrity and
expertise.Even if the NIA refuses to consider that evidence there is no
reason why the court should not seek independent expert opinion (not one
recommended by the government)on whether it is authentic.After all many
cases filed by NIA have been shown to be without proof in many courts in
various parts of the country.It is particularly disturbing that on the
ground of pending investigation people should have been robbed of their
liberty for years.What if there are rogue elements in the agency using the
cover of state security to implicate people they dislike or in their own
personal or group interest?That no longer seems such an outlandish idea.
To call a spade a spade, all the accused who are denied bail
are in some way or other involved in working for tribals and also the most
depressed among scheduled castes.It is also obvious that the areas in which
they have been working are areas where the tribal people of various ethnic
origins have in recent decades come under corporate onslaught,with the
land of their ancestors and their livelihoods suddenly being snatched away
from them.And the state is active in supporting corporates and
criminalising tribal resistance.
It has long been a crying scandal.Maoists have made use of this patent
oppression and injustice to mobilise tribals against it in the light of
their own agenda.Since the CRPF is alleged to be assisting corporates in
their ruthless assault on tribals,human rights activists who have no
sympathy for or link with Maoists,have felt compelled to come to the rescue
of the tribals in asserting and exercising their constitutional
rights.Father Stan Swamy for example was involved in helping hapless
exploited tribals to claim their rights under the Forest Rights Act.Since a
section of the tribals have come under Maoist influence, it has been
possible for state agencies to conflate the two groups in floating the idea
that the two are but two sides of the same coin.If you oppose corporates
and side with the tribals,the argument goes,no other proof is really
necessary to raise the ghost of their involvement in Maoist sedition. The
alleged computer files giving details of the nebulous plot just clinches
the proof,according to the prosecution.And it is this that has caused
international outrage,prompting the External Affairs ministry to issue an
unusual statement that all this is just misguided blather,and that
everything has been done according to laws of the land
Can this state of affairs be understood as normal, and can the
courts not even raise an eyebrow at such a turn of events? Pray what is the
meaning of justice in this context? Can the judiciary claim to be
independent if they take for granted the reckless and dangerous course the
executive has followed to degrade law into its cruel whims and paranoid
fancies?
One hopes the nightmare will end with the courts taking a
decisive but entirely rational view of the chaos into which the justice
system seems to be slipping.If they do not call a halt the executive will
surely engulf all the powers of the state and overturn all that we
understand by law,justice and democracy.It must be said that the recent
reasoned verdict of the Delhi High Court granting bail to three
accused detainees under UAPA act is historic in the sense that the bench
has consciously chosen to stop the slide into moral and judicial chaos.If
that does not jolt the state including the courts into sanity,It may even
become necessary to lay the evidence before the scrutiny of best and
unquestionably neutral international legal and judicial experts for a
truly just opinion on its tenability.One hopes that we shall be spared that
pain and shame.
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