Down Memory Lane

Court Titbits

The CBI cases in the court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Pondicherry, had opened after all. On the first day the CBI officer was present. The Magistrate had not yet occupied his chair and chatting was going on in the Court room.

I asked the CBI man, "Why did you file these false cases against me ?"

He replied, "Please ask Kireet Joshi", and winked his eye. Kireet Joshi was the Ashramite turned bureaucrat

"I am doing my duty", he said in his defence.

"And what is your duty when you are asked to prosecute an innocent man."

"I can only say that truth wins and truth is with you," he said from his heart.

At Bhubaneswar, this very officer told my counsel that it was a fact that I was innocent. Unfortunately, the Magistrate there took it into his head to harass me for my non-appearance before him in the beginning, as I was hoping for exemption from personal appearance and even a nonbailable warrant was issued by him against me which fact was not communicated to me by the person concerned in the Sri Aurobindo Society office, but I had already decided to appear on the next date and I left Pondicherry for Bhubaneswar a few hours before the CBI officer arrived at my house with the warrant. My mother told me on my return that the officer felt relieved to know that I had left already and he was saved from the unpleasant task of executing the warrant.

In fact I was not aware of the issue of the warrant until I wanted to leave the Magistrate's court for lunch when I was told that I was under arrest. The Magistrate refused to entertain my bail application in the morning hours although I was present there from before he came to the Court. The CBI lawyer was not anxious to keep me hungry, and I along with the lawyers walked out of the court room and went to my host for lunch.

In the post lunch session the Magistrate raised the unjust

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demand of two property- holders as sureties instead of one for my bail bond but in the circumstances he was to be obeyed. My counsel knew that the Magistrate was trying to go on delaying the matter so that I could be made to spend at least one night in custody. There was a panel of persons who stood sureties for a fee. Then one had to choose names which were favoured by the Magistrates concerned. All these considerations had to be taken care of and the grant of my bail and exemption from personal appearance until the framing of the charges was signed by the Magistrate only towards the fag end of the day. It was time for my evening walk and I strolled back to my host's house.

My host was Sardar Amar Singh, IAS, the accused No 1, in the Bhubaneswar case. He had retired as the Home Secretary to the Government of Orissa and the only offence he had done, he said, was that he had an untarnished record in his whole career. In the evening when we sat together to discuss the merits of the case and our line of action, he produced before me the copy of a letter he had written to the CBI which would help exonerate Navajata and implicate me. The fact stated by him was incorrect and he said that he had written it under instruction from Navajata in whom he had implicit faith and who had sent a special messenger from Pondicherry to Bhubaneswar to get his signature on the letter. I compared the date and it was an interesting phenomenon. The messenger was sent by Navajata a few hours after he had called on me in the JIPMER Hospital to express his brotherly concern over my long sickness.

Then there is the instance of the Magistrate at Tindivanam in the case initiated by the Governmental Administrator of Auroville against Manju and Saphala in which the Magistrate dismissed Manju's application for exemption from personal appearance, saying, "Then the very purpose of the complaint will be lost."

This is comparable to the pro-Government mentality of the Bhubaneswar Magistrate who attended to my bail bond.

Again there is the instance of a Madras High Court Judge reversing the Magistrate's order of my discharge, saying, "We know that he is innocent but he has to pass through the ordeal of the trial". He allowed the technicalities of law prevailing over justice.

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Several times I approached the Government with a request to review the prosecution of the three CBI cases against me, and,

(a)if the cases are seen as just, to advise the CBI to accelerate the court proceedings, or,

(b)if the cases are seen as unjust, to withdraw the cases.

I faced a stonewall.

All were unanimous that these were baseless charges, but the decision of prosecution of the cases was political and hence nothing could be done.

The one man in the outside world who tried to rescue me was Prabhu Dayal Himatsingka, who had been a Member of Parliament for decades, after a long spell as a freedom fighter. Even at the age of more than ninety he went to see the Minister concerned at odd hours even after I requested him not to strain himself in this difficult endeavour of obtaining justice from the politicians of our country. In the end he also gave up and wrote that in the present set-up one can not expect any justice from them unless one is oneself a politician.

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