Sanjay Hedge is an Indian lawyer- i.e. as stupid as shit. He writes in the Tribune-
Educate, organise, agitate — Dr Ambedkar’s slogan was not a call to violence.
Because the dude didn't want to be killed. Sadly he was shit at organizing or educating and a guy who gladly takes a well paid job on the Viceroy's Council can't be taken seriously as an agitator as opposed to a bitter, fat, diabetic, old man.
It was a democratic instruction manual. Learn enough to see injustice, organise enough to resist it, and agitate enough to force the State to listen.
Hegde, for some reason, the Supreme Court appointed him as interlocutor to talk to the nutters at Shaheen Bagh who helped Congress and the Left to achieve complete self-annihilation in the NRC. Muslims protesting against asylum being granted to non-Muslims fleeing Islamic terror, aren't an endearing sight. We must follow the example set by Nehru. When he became PM, the Muslim population of Delhi was 33 percent. Within months it fell to 5 percent. Nehru stripped citizenship from Muslims who had fled across the border in panic. Their property would be needed to resettle non-Muslim refugees.
If those words were spoken today, in a charged political moment, one shudders to think how they would be read through the lens of the UAPA.
Indian lawyers like telling stupid lies. Why not say 'Gandhi said 'don't kill and eat your baby'. If he said this today, Narendra Modi would sodomize him to death under the provision of Section 4 of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.
“Organise” would be recast as conspiracy.
Under Indian law, a criminal conspiracy only exists if there is an agreement to commit an illegal act or a legal act by illegal means. Why does this shithead not know this? The answer is that his brains have rotted away as a Supreme Court advocate.
“Agitate” would be described as mobilisation.
There can be mobilisation without agitation and vice versa. Agitation or mobilization is legal if the purpose is legal.
And the speaker, if sufficiently persuasive, might well be labelled an ideological driver of unrest and told that bail must wait.
No. The speaker would have charges against him dismissed. There must be an illegal purpose or modus operandi.
That is why the Supreme Court’s judgment on bail in the Delhi riots conspiracy case matters far beyond the fate of any Umar Khalid or Sharjeel Imam.
If they don't get bail, teachers who motivate students to form study circles and raise their academic grades will be arrested by the police. Narendra Modi may fuck them to death.
It speaks to what kind of dissent Indian democracy is prepared to tolerate, and at what cost.
Dissent which helps the ruling party is likely to be tolerated. Muslims clamouring for the throats of non-Muslims to be cut are a gift to the BJP. Look at Owaisi. He is a barrister who ate his dinners at Lincoln's Inn. He can get the Muslim vote while standing tall as a Nationalist. As the recent Bihar elections have revealed, he is gaining influence in the all important Hindi belt which is due to receive more parliamentary seats.
We must acknowledge that the majority of the applicants have, at long last, been granted bail. Some liberty for some, after years of incarceration, is better than none.
What is cool is that lawyers will still be able to make money out of the case for years and years. The Indian judiciary is itself a criminal conspiracy against the Indian people.
We should also note that for Umar and Sharjeel, the Court has permitted renewal of bail applications after a year. In a legal landscape where time often loses all meaning, even a calendar entry counts as hope.
Fuck hope. Emigrate. A country with a shitty judiciary is one you needed to get the fuck out of.
And yet, the refusal of bail to Umar and Sharjeel casts a long and troubling shadow over the judgment as a whole. The Court begins by acknowledging what cannot seriously be denied: prolonged incarceration engages Article 21, and pre-trial detention cannot become punishment.
Nor can you release dangerous criminals who pose a threat to public order.
Five years in prison without the commencement of trial is no trivial matter. But having acknowledged this, the Court steadily empties it of consequence. Delay, we are told, “does not operate as a trump card.” It is merely a “trigger for heightened judicial scrutiny.” In other words, five years without trial is not a constitutional failure; it is an administrative inconvenience that invites careful thought, not release.
Because the culprits are dangerous nutters. Releasing them imposes too high a price on society. Hegde expresses surprise that Judges go according to the law. How very strange!
This move sets the tone for everything that follows. Section 43D(5) of the UAPA looms large, as it always does.
It says no bail can be granted till the prosecution is heard on the matter. But even otherwise, bail would not be granted if the police case appears plausible.
'Provided that such accused person shall not be released on bail or on his own bond if the Court, on a perusal of the case diary or the report made under section 173 of the Code is of the opinion that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accusation against such person is prima facie true.'
The Court reiterates that at the bail stage, it must only see whether the accusation is “prima facie true”. This inquiry, we are reminded, is about statutory plausibility, not evidentiary sufficiency. Evidence is not weighed. Defences are not examined. The prosecution case must be taken at its highest. This framework, inherited from the Watali judgment (2019), ensures that the chargesheet becomes both the accusation and its own justification.
Watali was superseded by K.A. Najeeb (2021) such that prolonged incarceration without a trial becomes a balancing factor. Incidentally, all chargesheets are accusations. They contain material which justify it. How fucking stupid a lawyer do you have to be not to understand this?
Within this structure, the Court introduces what it considers a necessary distinction: the difference between peripheral participants and “prime conspirators.”
Everybody does so.
Umar and Sharjeel are placed firmly in the latter category.
Guys with PhDs are more likely to be 'master minds' than poor, illiterate, people.
They are described as central figures, ideological drivers, conceptualisers of protest strategy. This, according to the Court, warrants greater caution. Where an accused occupies a central role, constitutional intervention must be restrained.
No. When you are dealing with a 'mastermind' you need to be more cautious. A guy who plans a pogrom in which thousands are killed may not do any actual killing himself. Moreover, if he is smart, heis likely to have been quite effective in not leaving too much incriminating evidence.Yet his culpability may be greater than that of a minor or
This distinction is the judgment’s most consequential and dangerous move.
How could it be otherwise? Surely people who play a central role in a criminal matter should be treated more harshly than those who play a subordinate or ancillary role?
There is no allegation that either Umar or Sharjeel committed a violent act.
There is a prima facie case that they engaged in the unlawful activity of seeking to bring about rioting- that too of a communal nature.
There is no claim that they were present at any site of violence.
Nor was there any claim that Osama bin Laden was present at the World Trade Centre on 9/11. Why is this stupid man raising the issue.
The material against them consists largely of speeches, meetings, pamphlets and protest-related communication.
President Obama was a Law Professor. He knew there was no evidence that Osama had done anything other than make speeches, hold meeting and so forth. Yet Obama ordered Osama's kidnapping and killing.
Yet these are treated as markers of conspiratorial centrality.
Because, the speeches, meetings, pamphlets and protest-related communication was clearly and directly linked to a very serious breach of the police and a clear and present danger to the security of the public.
Speech becomes structure.
No it doesn't. A structure can be imputed to speech- e.g. grammatical structure. But that which displays structure is not itself structure.
Influence becomes intent.
No. The accusation is that both had the intention to influence large numbers of people to carry out criminal actions.
Visibility becomes culpability.
No. Visual evidence confirms culpability unless similar evidence of equal probative value is offered in rebuttal.
Once this logic is accepted, bail becomes a reward for irrelevance.
Nobody accepts this logic. Those whose actions were irrelevant to a case don't need bail because they aren't under arrest nor can they be charged with any offense.
Those who are marginal may go free. Those who speak effectively, organise widely and articulate dissent coherently are told that their prominence counts against them.
If a mob kicks in the head of this nutter, his Mummy should be thrown in jail even though she is only marginally connected to the matter. On the other hand, the mastermind of the mob-attack (who may have egged on a bunch of drunken hot-heads by saying Hegde is a child molesting Satanist), should be set free because she spoke effectively, organised on quite a wide basis and articulated her dissent from the law against vigilante action in a coherent way.
The more seriously the State takes your ideas,
the more resources it devotes to implementing them.
the less seriously the Court takes your liberty.
The suggestio falsi here is that the Court imprisons people for their ideas rather than their actions.
The judgment insists that it is not conducting a mini-trial.
It was on a point of law. It looked as though a previous judgment applied such that both might gain bail simply by reason of lapse of time. It looks as though the Bench is lenient to small fry while upholding the law when it comes to 'masterminds'. This is perfectly sensible. To defend Umar & Sharjil, you need to say 'they are stupid and useless. They studied at JNU for fuck's sake! You are lucky they aren't currently eating their own shit.'
But it uncritically adopts the prosecution’s hierarchy of roles. Labels such as “mastermind” and “architect” are accepted as neutral descriptors rather than contested conclusions.
Why? Because these guys were presenting themselves as 'intellectuals' with advanced degrees. They should have sat drooling in court eating their own shit if they wanted to establish diminished capacity.
No meaningful inquiry is made into whether ideological articulation or protest coordination, without a proximate link to violence, can satisfy the statutory ingredients of a terrorist offence.
This is irrelevant. There was a proximate link to violence- viz. the Delhi riots. It may be that both have sufficient evidence to create 'reasonable doubt' re. the prosecution case. But that will only come out at the trial.
This is where the judgment’s philosophy becomes explicit. In a passage that will be cited often by lower courts, the SC observes: “The Constitution guarantees personal liberty, but it does not conceive liberty as an isolated or absolute entitlement, detached from the security of the society in which it operates… Where a special statutory framework has been enacted to address offences perceived to strike at these foundations, courts are duty-bound to give effect to that framework.” This is the language of exception, calmly spoken.
No. It is the language of defeasibility which as H.A.L Hart observed, is the essence of the Law. There is a right to liberty but it is defeated by a superior immunity the State may have under specific circumstances.
Liberty is no longer the baseline from which the State must justify departure.
Yet, such is in fact the case. If a matter is justiciable, then every and any party associated with it may approach the court offering or seeking justification with respect to some aspect of it.
It is a conditional interest, always secondary to an asserted threat.
No. It is merely defeasible. This lawyer knows shit about jurisprudence.
This brings us to Cicero’s bleak maxim that in times of war the law falls silent.
No it doesn't. Even in times of war, Indian law is not silent.
The judgment does not say we are at war. It does something subtler.
Hedge is lying.
It assumes that when security is invoked, the law must speak in a different voice.
No. It assumes that which is justiciable is not generally univocal. Moreover, judgments are given in different registers- e.g. obiter dicta vs ratio.
What this cretin is saying is 'when it comes to crime the Law refuses to uphold the liberty principle- i.e. sends criminals to jail'. In other words, the argument he is putting forward here is against the incarceration of anybody for any reason whatsoever.
Lord Atkin’s warning, delivered during an actual war, that the law speaks the same language in war as in peace, finds no place here.
Nonsense! Liversidge v Anderson(1942) is part and parcel of Indian law. It has been frequently cited- e.g. Gopalan, Faizur Rahman, Anuradha Bhasin etc.
His description of judges who are more executive-minded than the executive might find resonance amongst legal commentators.
The Bench knows it well.
The consequences for democratic dissent are obvious.
No. Dissent, democratic or not, is perfectly legal. Liversidge wasn't in jail for dissent. Oswald Moseley was. He remained in jail for the duration of hostilities. Liversidge was considered to be some swindling type of Jew.
Dissent is not an ornamental feature of democracy. It is its safety valve.
Any type of political system can feature 'dissent' including highly totalitarian ones. Parliamentary Democracy requires an opposition party and partisan debate over proposed legislation. Indeed, the leader of the Opposition may be paid a Government salary. But a tyrant may keep guys on the payroll whose job is to pick holes in the proposals put forward by Ministers.
It allows anger and opposition to be expressed without violence.
I suppose this silly man means 'right of public assembly'. But it is never absolute.
When dissent is reimagined as conspiracy, that valve is sealed shut.
More than 50 people were killed during the Delhi riots. Valves aren't supposed to get people killed. If they do, they are removed.
On the other hand, it is certainly true that when beating, sodomizing and decapitating Hegde are reimagined as crimes, the valve that is his anal orifice is effectively sealed shut. This may make those who know him very fucking angry.
Protest becomes preparatory conduct.
It may indeed be so. Bank robbers organize a political protest in the streets so they can safely blow open the Bank vault and escape under cover of the crowds
Organisation becomes unlawful association.
by due process of law.
Agitation becomes a threat to sovereignty.
It may not be much of a threat and still be illegal.
Seen in this light, Ambedkar’s slogan acquires a tragic irony. “Educate, organise, agitate” describes precisely the kind of civic engagement that sustains constitutional democracy.
Nonsense! Constitutional democracies are sustained in the same way as any other type of Polity- viz. by taxes and armies. India saw a lot of agitation in 1942. The British Raj suppressed it with great ease. It was the Japanese Army which proved difficult to defeat. American air support and Chinese and African troops enabled the Brits to prevail. Stupid lawyers and worthless academics and guys with PhDs can't sustain shit. They can merely create a nuisance. The question is whether Sharjeel & Khalid can do anything more to help the BJP. I think not. After all, the BJP now rules Delhi and did very well in Bihar.
Under the logic of this judgment, it also describes the pathway to being labelled a central conspirator, denied bail and told to wait patiently while years pass.
My guess is that, one way or another, we will get more reliance on fast track courts. Instead of bail applications, courts will hear appeals.
The Court does attempt to soften the blow. It grants the majority of the appellants bail. It recognises, in theory, that prolonged incarceration is a matter of concern. It allows for renewal of bail applications after a year. One is grateful, genuinely, for these small mercies. But they do not answer the central problem. If five years in prison without trial is not enough to justify bail for those accused of being ideologically influential, what will be? Six years? Seven? A decade?
The alternative is a return to TADA courts. Sentence everybody to life within six weeks of being arrested. They won't have time to arrange a proper defence. The present system is cheaper and, may well have superior outcomes for intelligence gathering. You can get at a guy out on bail or, if he is high value, keep him under surveillance.
The Supreme Court often expresses concern about trial courts and high courts mechanically denying bail under special statutes. But it must confront its own role in shaping this culture. When it endorses distinctions that privilege prosecutorial storytelling over constitutional principle, it sends a clear message down the judicial hierarchy. Liberty is optional. Incarceration is safe.
No. It sends the message that you too can be shitty. The fish rots from the head.
And so we return, at the end, to the beginning.
What this guy should have done, at the beginning, was throw doubt on the sustainability of the case against Khalid & Imam. Alternatively, he could say 'the only way we can curb inordinate delay is to have a rule that bail becomes compulsory even for offences under UAPA after a fixed term of years.' But he hasn't made either of these arguments. He has talked hi-falutin' bollocks.
Five years of imprisonment, no trial, and no directly attributable violent act
not needed under the relevant act
made this a straightforward case for bail.
No. It is a straightforward case for denying bail because it is under UAPA.
Instead, the Court chose caution over courage.
The Court chose to laugh heartily at two worthless shitheads and the useless lawyers who represented them.
It chose to speak the language of permanent emergency.
The only person using such language is Hegde.
For those who have finally walked out of prison, there is relief.
D'uh!
For those still inside, there is a calendar date pencilled in, and a hope that next year may bring better news.
That the BJP has gotten even stronger? I suppose so.
No comments:
Post a Comment