P M Ravindran2l L8,' Aathira', Sivapuri, Kalpathy-678003

Tele : 049 1 - 251 60 42; E-mai l : raviforj ustice@gmail. com

Fi Ie : Pers/j ud-cji jsk-reforms-3 101 17

Mr J S Kehar,

3L Jan 2OL7

Please permit me to introduce myself as one amoung a billion plus, to be precise one

amoung the 99 percent of our population, living with the frustrating and disgustingrealisation that it is futile to even seek justice in this country! That our judiciary is an

absolute failure by the fundamental concept of justice delayed is justice denied is a fact thateven you cannot deny. And then when it comes to whetting the decisions on the touchstone of the principle that justice should not only be done but seen to be done it wiil have

to be admitted that our judiciary is in fact a realthreat to rule of law itself. :{

Before I proceed further let me place on record three actions taken by you that gives one

the hope that all is not lost yet.

The first one is your decision to introduce additional benches for the summer vacation. lt isindeed the first step of a long'journey that is required to finally get the judiciary to work like

any other institution of governance!

The next is to do away with (gender) biases while deciding cases. Here the question arises :

will you be able to rewrite the laws themselves. I invite your attention to the followingdecisions of the Kerala High Court:JancyJoseph Vs Union of lndia (1999 (1) KLT 422) andMary Chacko vs Jancy Joseph (2005 (3) KLT 925) which have dealt with the applicability ofSec 56 of CPC to Sec 27 of Consumer Protection Act. The injustice should be obvious toanyone who has any sense of justicel To put it bluntly one might ask where is it written thatindividuals can be denied justice?

The third is your direction to take up cases on a first come first served basis.

At this point of time I can't also forget that you headed the bench that quashed the NationalJudicialAppointments Commission Act, on the ground that it was unconstitutional. I mustsay that it was an absolutely unconstitutional and illegaljudgement. Those of us who have

been observing the introduction and consolidation of the colleglum system know only toowell how the judiciary took advantage of minority governments at the centre to perpetratethis unconstitutional system. But for a layman like me this legislation or its quashing did notmake any difference. The cr:edibility of the executive in the matter of appointments tovarious quasijudicial bodies fiom National Human Rights Commission to state informationcommissions and the various ombudsmen leave much to be desired. Having said that, theneed for the more seriouly important and.urgent National Judicial AccountabilityCommission which can try complaints against the omissions and commissions of judges as

per ordinary laws applicable to ordinary citizens cannot be over emphasised.

The apex court decisions in Jayakrishnan Master murder case and the more recent Soumya

murder case sends shivers down one's spine due to the grossness of the injusticeperpetrated! ln the former, where a schoolteach.er in Kerala was murdered in front of thestudents of his primary class, five or six persons were convicted and sentenced to death by

the trialcourt. lt was uphled bythe Kerala High Court too. The apex court acquitted all ofthem except one, whose sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. But even this

convict was soon walking free, only to be accused in another murder case and arrestedllnterestingly this person made a revelation through the media: that is, all those who hadbeen let off by the apex court in the earlier case had actually been framed by the police! Hisrevelation notwithstanding, the fact remains that it was a mob that attacked and killed theteacher in broad daylight in his class room, in front of his studentsl Then how is it that thepolice failed to nab the real murderers and successfully got innocent men convicted? Andwhy did even the apex court failto pursue the case to its logical end not onlyto punish theother members of the gang involved in the murder but also punish the cops involved inframing innocents? And what about compensating those who had suffered the long years ofagony in custody and pursuing the case till being acquitted?

Talking of framing innocents, there is this case of a top scientist, Nambi Narayanan, of ISRO

who was framed in what is known as the ISRO spy case. He not only lost his job buthad tosuffertorture and all other agonises connected with pursuing justice in this country. Theapex court acquitted him too and he has been fighting for a compensation of a merE Rs L

crore for the last decade plus. And compare it with the expeditious manner in whid a

former apex court judge was awarded a compensation of Rs 100 crores for a mediainadvertantly telecasting his photo for a minute or less while reporting a crime involvinganother judge with a similar sounding name !

This narrative would be endless. But suffice to say that court decisions that uphold theprinciple of justice not only being done but seen to be done are becoming rarer bythe day,if not missing altogether.

I wouldn't waste my time reproducing whatever I have been writing about the need forjudicial reforms for the last decade and a half. But some of these have been posted as blogsand you may 8o through them if you are interested. Of particular relevance would be:

ndran@redi l.com&session Id=lKLKSKxeswi

Reforming our justice delivery system athttp://raytforiustice.blogspot.com/ZOtt/02/reformins-our-iustice-deliverv-svstem.html

who will judge the judges? at http://raviforiustice.bloespot.com/2011/03/who-wiil-iudee-iudees.htiTl i'

Parliamentary Standing Committee on Judicial Reforms athttp://raviforiustice. b logspot.c om /201,1/03lparlia m enta rv-sta n d in e-co m m ittee-on. htm I

Justice Delivery System- FAQs athttp://raviforiustice. blosspot.com/2011/02liustice-deliverv-svstem-faqs. h-tm I

lndian judiciary-who said what at

ls the judiciary taking citizens for a ride? at http://bloss.rediff.com/scripts/blog form-

hVDU&bloeld=1043020674

Report of the NCRWC- a Citizens Review at

Access to Justice-A Stake holder's Reporthttp ://ravifori ustice. b access-to'i ustice-

Democracy? East is East and West is West at http://www.articlesbase.com/politics-a rticles/democracveast-is-east-an d-west-is-west-4287828. htm I

The (Late) RTI Act at http://rithica20l6.bloespot.inl2016/10/the-rti-act-is-dead.html

And there are more...

To cut this communication short, here ere a few things which the judiciary must do urgentlybefore it becomes irrelevant and throws the nation into a civil war like situation:

L. Ensure timely disposal of cases.

1.1,. For this the first requirement if of course having competent judges. fhis willinvolve specialisation in subject specific laws. Though this is the principld'underlying the constitution of various tribunals and commissions, in practicetheir performance have been worse than regular courts.

L.2. Even though the number of adjournments that can be giyen is specifed evenin the Cons'umer Protection Act, they are all violated with impunity. Just to give

an exam.ple, in OP 282/99 of Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, Palakkad (OP

No 85/95 transferred from Malappuram), the opposite party had producedinterim stay order on28/1.0/99 from the Kerala High Court and the stay wasvacated only on 8/6/2005 but through out this period the case was listed 58times and adjourned! lt was finally posted for orders on 6/7/07 but was openedfor re-hearing suo moto on 15l2lOB and went on an adjournment spree from3l3l}8to3Ll5l2O10. During this spree it was adjourned 17 times, including 5

times for want of members/President and 10 times for orders only! lt wasdismissed when an application was submitted under the RTI Act to find out thestatus I

1.3. The next is limiting the number of cases listed for hearing to pragmatic levelsand ensuring that all the listed cases are heard and progressed to somemeaningful extent. ln lower courts more than a hundred cases are listed per daywhen actual hearings are conducted only in less than dozen. Most of the fewworking hours of the court is wasted in 'mustering'onlyl

1.4. Cut out the holidays enjoyed by the judiciary exclusively. ln fact there is aneed for lower courts to work round the clock like police stations.

Ensurejusticeisdoneineverycase. ltisimportantnotonlyforjusticetobedonebut for justice to be seen to be done. Unfortunately what we find is the opposite.Whether it is the final decision in Jayakrishnan master murder case, Soumya murdercase orthe cases involving celebrities like Salman Khan there are many questionsthat create doubts about the credibility, reliabiltiy and intergrity of the judiciary.

Ensure transparency in the processes and functioning of the courts. ln fact it isobnoxious that some cases linger on for decades when some, of the same category,are disposed off in a jiffy. List of cases under specific charges should be updatedatleast once in a quarter, progress evaluated and re-prioratised, if necessary.Coming to transparency, it has to be noted that the claim of the then CJl, K G

. Balakrishnan,thathisofficedidnotfall underthepurviewoftheRTlActhadtakenthe credibility, reliabiltiy and intergrity of the judiciary to new depths.

3.

The so called independence of the judiciary is myth. Atreast one judge, who wasappointed as Lokayukta of Gujarat, refused to accept tr,e appoinil; ii,|; that irwould be impossible for him to perform his duties when the ,executive, was not co-operative!we all know how it is a system of ,rscratch your back, you scratch myback'that is the working moder in our system of government. Rn j ,r,.a i, *6, inspite of scams worth lakhs of crores surfacing nobody worth the name has beenpunished so far everl

The totat failure of the judiciary has led to a situation where everybody who isanybody in government or criminals with money or muscle power tend to driveevery honest, hard working and simple citizen to the judiciary where they can simply'rest'their cases and wait for the good Lord of Death to embrace theml The needhere is for even public servants to be treated as independent litigants and,made tos.uffer the court processes and punished for failure to successfully prosecuie/defendtheir cases. A system of rewards for successfury prosecuting/defending casesinvolving public interest should be introduced to provide incentive for horrbst publicservants' (Please note that in the RTI Act, the penalty is imposed on the delinquentpublic information officer as an individual and it has been clarifed by atleast somehigh courts that if the penalised Plo has to Bo on appeal he has to do so at his ownexpensel Unfortunatleythe apex court has not reiterated it and hence it has notbeen implemented a[the national levell)

The RTI Act also reminds one of ,how even the simplest of laws, absolutely clear andunambiguous, are voitated with impunity and that too by the very authoritiesappointed to enforce it. rt has been reported in the media (,Morethan 60 per centCIC orders flawed: study at http://www.dnaindia.c

)that60p.orJ"fficommissioners are flawed. As an activist in this area I knowthat 100 pc of the ordersof the information commissioners at the central lnformation commission and KeralaState lnformation commission are flawed. ln fact the task of an informationcommissioner is simpler than that of a munsif in our courts. But thesecommissioners who have been given the status and remun.rrii* oi cr,'ur Electioncommissioner/ Election commissionerf chief secretary have;ii;rirrrj"*i'.n"law they have been tasked, equipped and empowered to

"ntor... ri onrv tr.,u iu.r.'

touted rule of law actually prevailed in this country each of them could besuccessfully prosecuted under Sec 2L9 of the lpC,and would be marking their time inpr:ison for a good 7 yearsl And to be sure there are enough right thinking citizens inthis country still who wourd haut them up before our courts if onry they had theconfidence they would get justice within their life time .

The above list is by no means exhaustive. But it should be sufficient to make one thinkwhere all you can intervene and help improve the situation. And this, I must say, is thepurpose of this communication to you.

Yours sincerely,

Sri J S Kehar

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CJl, Supreme Couit of lndiaNew Delhi