New Delhi, December 10, 2021 (PPI-OT):Photos and an excerpt from the newly launched autobiography of the former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi has drawn flak from commentators and activists as he boasts how he took his five-member bench for dinner in the evening after delivering the unanimous but controversial verdict in November 2019 on Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute.
In the book titled ‘Justice for the Judge: An Autobiography’ Justice Gogoi writes: “After the judgment, the Secretary General organised a photo session in the judges’ gallery outside Court No 1, below the Ashoka Chakra. In the evening, I took the judges for dinner to Taj Mansingh Hotel. We ate Chinese food and shared a bottle of wine, the best available there. I picked the tab, being the eldest.”
Apart from Justice Gogoi, the bench included then CJI-designate S a Bobde and Justices D Y Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and S Abdul Nazeer. Observers raised questions on the act of celebrating a judgment and flaunting about it in the book. Junaid Bhat, a Twitter user, while sharing photos from the book asked, “What’s with judges ‘celebrating’ a verdict? Means they wanted it to go a certain way? What happened to justice?”
The judgment cleared the way for construction of a Ram temple at the site where until 1992 a Mughal-era Mosque called Babri Masjid stood. Hindutva mobs led by top leaders of the Bharatiya Janata party and other allied groups from across the country travelled to the town of Ayodhya and brought down the mosque in a brazen display of majoritarian violence as the police watched as spectators.
Claiming that the site is the birthplace of their deity Ram, some Hindu groups fought a legal battle which they eventually won in November 2019 with the Supreme Court judgment. In August 2020, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the temple which is expected to be constructed by 2025.
Senior advocate M R Shamshad pointed out that the bench celebrated a verdict that “dislodged Babri Masjid from its place”. Political commentator Prof Apoorvanand said that instead of celebrating, the judgment should have led them to think privately how and why it was given and why they could not avoid it. Are they really proud of it?
Apart from celebrations after Ayodhya verdict, the book is also making news for discussing the allegations of sexual harassment levelled against him by a woman staffer of the Supreme Court.
In April 2019 when the allegations surfaced, CJI Gogoi convened a meeting of the judges and presided over the bench to decide on the matter which evoked criticism.
Answering a question at the book launch on Wednesday, he said, “In hindsight, I should not have been a judge on the bench. It might have been better if I was not part of the bench. We all make mistakes. No harm in accepting it.”
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