The Supreme Court

April 12, 2004, was the Supreme Court’s finest hour yet. Justices Arijit Pasayat and Doraiswamy Raju transferred the Best Bakery case out of Gujarat expressing strong displeasure at the state government’s handling of the case. It refers to the attack on a bakery in Vadodara in which 12 Muslims were killed, many of them burned alive. The prime witness, a teenager, Zahira Sheikh, had appealed to the Supreme Court for justice saying she had changed her statement in the Gujarat court because of intimidation and fear. That case fell apart when 41 of the 75 witnesses who were to testify changed their minds about giving evidence.

The Supreme Court judgement has restored public faith in the justice system and secularism. For the first time, the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat which presided over the killing of more than 1,000 Muslims over weeks of unrelenting violence was definitively told off. This month, the justices rapped the government very sternly again on its knuckles, throwing out its petition for modifications to their judgement. You will force us to take the names of the perpetrators of the violence, the justices thundered in court. Suddenly there is an uplifting of sagging spirits. One Best Bakery judgement has taken away some of the disappointments of the recent past. Over the Supreme Court’s failure to punish the guilty in the Bhopal Gas disaster; stop the Gujarat government from raising the height of the Sardar Sarovar Project until all the affected people are rehabilitated (2000); and with its ruling on Hindutva (1996), that changed forever the politics of identity practiced by the bjp. There have been historic moments too. The major strides made in cleaning the poisonous air over Delhi in the last few years can be attributed to a July 1998 order in which the Supreme Court required the conversion of all public vehicles from diesel to compressed natural gas. By November 2002, diesel city buses and non-cng three-wheelers were removed from the streets of the capital. There have been other judgements: the sexual harassment in the workplace case (Visakha 1997); the Samata judgement on the inalienable right of tribals to their land and forests (1997); the prohibition of children in hazardous industries with the onus on employees for their education (1996); and, the order seeking full records, financial and criminal, of all election candidates (2001). An activist judiciary has admitted a pil on the right to food (2001). The apex court would not be right to take on the role of the executive, but it is certainly showing the way.