'Magistrates Should Not Curtail Personal Liberty In A Casual Manner' : Justice Deepak Gupta | Full Text Of Interview

Former Supreme Court judge Justice Deepak Gupta, in an interview with Manu Sebastian, Managing Editor of LiveLaw, shared his opinion about the case against fact-checker Mohammed Zubair and expressed concern about the worrying trend of Courts denying bail without proper examination. He stated that many judges are scared to grant bail due to fear of public opinion and added that judicial academies which train Magistrates must instil in their minds that they are dealing with fundamental rights of the citizens. The former judge also commented about the dangers of media trial and the pressure created by social media commentary on judges.Here is the full transcript of the interview. The video can be watched here.Something is amiss in case against Zubair : Justice GuptaMr. Sebastian: "The arrest of Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News, has given rise to a lot of concerns regarding the future of independent journalism in India. There is a widespread belief that the arrest of Zubair is the vindictive action taken for his activities of fact checking and documentation of hate speech. Several journalists and activists, both in India and abroad, have condemned the arrest and the case against him. The case is based on a tweet posted by him four years ago where he had shared the clip of a scene from a movie which had released in 1983 and it is now alleged that the tweet is provocative and has offended religious sentiments. There are several questions regarding the genuineness of the case and also the manner in which the courts have dealt with the case. There are some doubts as to whether the courts have safeguarded fundamental rights and have ensured due process both in arrest and remand...Do you see any substance or merit in this widespread belief that this case is a malicious case based on concocted facts to target journalism or the activities of Zubair?"Justice Gupta: "I would not go to the extent of saying 'malicious'. Malice in law is something very different. But I definitely feel that something is amiss as far as this case is concerned. He was called to join investigation in another matter where he had got protection from arrest. While the investigation was going on, a notice was given to him that we now we are arresting you in the fresh case which related to a tweet which he had made with regard to a movie made by one of the greatest filmmakers, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, who had a great sense of humour...it was a comedy...I have seen the tweet, it is just a single page- the hotel name has been changed from 'Honeymoon hotel' to 'Hanuman hotel'...it may be offensive, I don't know, it is for somebody else to decide. But does it fall within the purview of something which has the likelihood of causing great disaffection between two religious communities or not? It does not offend Hinduism in any manner. Assuming that there is something wrong, it is still not something which is a crime. And you see, for something to be a crime, it should have a tendency to hurt religious sentiments- I think the words are stronger. Now after four years of this tweet and 40 years of this movie being made, no religious sentiments were hurt and nobody had ever complained of this tweet. How does the police suddenly wake up and say that we have got a complaint, an anonymous complaint? If you today go to lodge a complaint, if a poor person goes to lodge a complaint in a police station even in a very serious offence, it is very difficult to lodge a complaint. They will say 'file a written complaint, file an affidavit'...Now on a tweet, (they say a complaint has been made). I am not saying it is illegal- they can do it. But do they do it in the normal run-of-the-mill cases? Every day we see cases in the Supreme Court where women have gone and complained of rape and the case has not been registered. We had that case in Hathras last year and so many other instances. Here, on a tweet, they lodged...Now this gentleman, who has tweeted it, it seems that two days later, his twitter account had been closed. Then it has been reopened. But who is the person who is complaining? Given the background that Zubair is involved in fact checking, he is part of Alt News- even I go to their site sometimes to check out if some news is correct, not only them, there are others also- I may agree to a certain extent that when journalists, fact checkers, their alignment is with a particular ideology or ideological group, then they tend to be targeted. It is human nature. But the law should not (unclear)...We may target as belonging to different ideology but we expect the police and above to behave without any such ideological grounds. I have a simple question, which I think was what Justice Surya Kant also alluded to. I am not saying that Nupur Sharma did not have the right to say that. Being a great advocate for free speech, I think she also had the right to say it and nobody needs to get so offensive or hurt about everything. But if she...

'Magistrates Should Not Curtail Personal Liberty In A Casual Manner' : Justice Deepak Gupta | Full Text Of Interview

Manu Sebastian

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