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Synopsis

Former Delhi High Court judge and Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court, Justice S Muralidhar on Saturday while responding to a question from the audience at the annual conclave organized by South First in Bangalore said that he was "clueless" about what in his judgment in the 2020 Delhi riots case 'upset' the union government that led to his immediate transfer out of the Delhi High Court.

The retired judge was in a discussion with Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde on the topic “Who wins who loses in the Judicary-Executive faceoff.”

During the discussion, one person asked him, "During the Delhi riots case, you made a late night judgment. And there are arguments that you upset the government and you did not make it to the Supreme Court. What are your views on this?”

To this, Justice Muralidhar replied, “I don’t know what is it about my judgement that upset the government. Every other colleague of mine in the Delhi High Court would have done the same thing. Any other judge in my place would have, or should have done the same thing. So, I am as clueless as you are, about what upset them, that is, if at all they were upset? But it does not matter, as it was the right thing to do”.

On February 26, 2020, a bench of Delhi High Court headed by Justice Muralidhar had criticised the Delhi Police in open court for the way it handled the investigation into the unrest and communal violence that had occurred in the city. He had also conducted an emergency midnight hearing at his residence to shift 22 severely injured riot victims to hospitals that had the facilities to treat them. After this, he was transferred. It is important to point out that in March 2020, he had already cleared the air about his transfer - pointing out that he had told the then CJI Bobde, that he he had no objection to the proposal of the transfer.

The Judge also discussed the widespread perception that the Executive had an unhealthy amount of power over the judiciary and that Supreme Court and high court nominations were frequently made secretly.

“This is a question that we constantly ask ourselves and we have a set of answers. Like most in the audience will subscribe to the view that when there is a strong executive, there will be a weak judiciary, and vice versa. But if you read history through the eyes of serious researchers like George Gadbois, the book he has written in two parts, first of which came in his name and the second which came in Abhinav Chandrachud’s name, the book ‘Supreme Whispers,’ you will find that there have been times in India’s judiciary when we have had a strong executive and the perceptible shift happened in 1971..when the Congress came back to 352 seats in the loksabha and  a perceptible shift in the appointment to the Supreme Court took place. If you read all of that, you will get a sense of dejavu", he said.