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HomeNational InterestWhy we killed a 'blockbuster' story about Justice Anand

Why we killed a ‘blockbuster’ story about Justice Anand

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Former CJI A.S. Anand passed away on Saturday. He featured prominently in this ‘National Interest’ on the health of the judiciary, and a tough lesson in an editor’s life.

Remembering the era of lyricist Anand Bakshi on his death anniversary, and thinking about the judiciary at the same time brought back to me the lines he wrote for the 1969 Ashok Kumar-Jeetendra-Mala Sinha starrer, Do Bhai.

Kumar and Jeetendra are brothers, judge and cop. The rest is predictable, with the judge caught in that eternal dilemma, to punish or to forgive. Bakshi scripted this for Mohammed Rafi as “is duniya mein o duniyawalo, bada mushkil hai insaf karna/bada aasan hai dena sazayein, bada mushkil hai par maaf karna” (briefly: Tough to be a judge when it’s much more convenient to punish than to forgive).

While an editor’s station in life is leagues below that of a judge, the same logic also applies to our lives: It is easier to publish and be damned than to refrain and explain. As an editor it’s the toughest thing to let go of a juicy story only because it is a little unconvincing. I am talking about one such call.

The one I am bringing up here is to do with the then Chief Justice of India, in the winter of 1998. If I am breaking confidences 20 years later and mentioning the names of a few wise and respectable people, they will forgive me because they will understand my reasons.

Our formidable legal editor worked on a meticulous investigation on the past of Justice A.S. Anand, who had just taken over as CJI. It painted the picture of a judge who had cut corners, overlooked conflict of interest, wasn’t transparent on gifts, and short-changed share-croppers on his lands. The series went through many editing changes as we went over it in the minutest manner possible.

The story was big enough for me to personally take it to top lawyers for advice, say 10 of the then top 12. The split, to publish or not, was about 2:8. Reasons for not publishing, however, weren’t always legal or factual. Be careful not to end up hurting an innocent and damage our greatest institution. Of the two who said go ahead, one said facts were facts and no other logic should apply and the other was gung-ho. What will the judge do, I asked him. Kill us with contempt?

He will do no such thing, all he will have left to do is commit suicide, he said.

That shook us up. Inadvertently, this doyen of Indian law had flagged to us the real import of what we were contemplating. We went over each line again. There was just one thing missing: A response from Justice Anand. To all inquiries, his office said as a serving CJI, he couldn’t engage with the media. So we had our alibi: in spite of our repeated attempts to reach him, Justice Anand wasn’t available.

Two public figures I greatly respect got in touch with me then: Sushma Swaraj and Arun Shourie, both members of the Vajpayee cabinet. Both knew Justice Anand and family for long and said they were totally unconvinced he would have done anything dishonest. I told them our story was solid, that we had waited long enough, and it wasn’t possible to hold it. If our facts are wrong, we need Justice Anand to convince us.

Sushma Swaraj came back with a suggestion that I call him, which I did. Justice Anand agreed to see me, with all the facts, but off-the-record.

The rest, briefly, is as follows. He received me, with a mix of suspicion and warmth. We spent several hours going over every charge. He had a leather briefcase filled with documents, tax returns, scribbles, paddy sale receipts, his children’s wedding invites, ledgers he had given the court and tax authorities on shagun amounts received at the weddings.

I came back with his “facts”. There was plenty of further to-ing and fro-ing.

It seemed he had a convincing answer for everything. Net-net, there was only one thing left unaccounted for: Six half-bags of paddy many years earlier, the value of which may have been denied to a sharecropper. At that point, it was worth no more than Rs 3,000-4,000 and could be an accounting error.

I returned deflated. Here we thought we had the scoop of our lifetime, and now this cold shower of facts. No newspaper was going to damn the chief justice over a doubtful transaction of six half-bags of paddy.

One moment stays imprinted on my mind out of those mutually awkward and painful hours. Every fact is before you, I am the Chief Justice of India and have answered each question raised by you, he said, do you think you will still go ahead and hurt not just me but this great institution? And I saw — in my own embarrassment and horror — his eyes moist.

That story was killed. It remains the most difficult of the very few similar calls I have had to make.

I have reflected on it often enough since. Would we be so patient and so open-minded and ultimately self-denying if it was to do with a politician or a civil servant? The only reason we waited that long to get the CJI’s version was that it had to do with an institution we so respect, and approach whenever our freedoms are under threat.

The judiciary remains our most trusted institution when the annual Edelman-WEF survey tells you that trust in governments is globally at a historic low. As Saurabh Shukla, the “judge” caricature, tells the court in Jolly LLB-2, there is much wrong with our judiciary, look at how dirty this court is, I don’t even feel like coming to work each morning and can’t wait for it to be 6 pm, so I can head home. But remember even then, when two people fight, what does one tell the other? I will see you in court. Because people believe whatever its problems, the judiciary will give them justice.

It’s for all these reasons that our top judiciary should engage in deep internal debate on how to preserve and enhance this incredible popular capital and social contract. Is intervening in the executive domain on a too-frequent basis the best way to invest this capital? How far from judicial vigilantism is the concept of setting up empowered committees of retired judges to administer governance issues, from air quality to illegal constructions to cricket? Does speaking, and acting in anger and irritation enhance judicial capital? Is the fact that (as research by NGO Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy shows) 70 per cent of all retiring Supreme Court judges have found a place on a government tribunal, body, or a court-appointed committee not worth debating? Even if the conclusion is that the retirement age should be extended to 70, an idea I support. Is a retiring CJI in a Raj Bhawan ok?

Nothing is too sensitive to debate, least of all if it is vital to an institution so valuable it will make us editors sit on a blockbuster story for weeks and then put it to sword, the editorial equivalent of the late Anand Bakshi’s most difficult decision.

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7 COMMENTS

  1. No one is perfect. But realizing is first step. Accepting as it own pit falls. But perfection is achieved before destruction but one has to strive for it as it is the peak ready to fall.

  2. You did well to talk to the chief justice himself. Even the greatest of all investigations may not be without flaws. Publishing an investigative story without the view points of the person in question is incorrect. When the the person in question is the torchbearer of the judiciary, there is always an instinct that stops journalsts or the public in their tracks . That’s because the judges are expected to be aloof, and away, from the media glare unlike politicians.

  3. Excellent article, Shekhar ji. I’m glad to have rediscovered you on this page; you remain a highly respected “Press-man” . Keep writing in your inimitable style. Best wishes.

  4. My friend was suspended from his post of Principal of a Polytechnic college in Jharkhand. He wrote a 20- page letter to Retired J Anand, who was then heading the NHRC. His letter was not even acknowledged. Then he wrote a 200-page letter in English. He received an acknowledgement. And after sometime his sustenance allowance was released by the Jharkhand govt. Nothing more and nothing less than this the NHRC did for him. So their is a feudal mind set in those who sit in top positions of Institutions. A letter in Hindi doesn’t convey the pain one suffers, but the one in English did, in this case. My friend was a Gold Medallist in Mechanical engineering from Bhagalpur Engineering College, and a first class M.Tech from IIT Kanpur, and went on to do his PhD from IIT Delhi, which he left to take up a job. This biographical information is given lest people think he couldn’t write English.

  5. Mr Gupta you weren’t so diligent when you castigated the three Armed Forces Chiefs in your editorial after the 6th Pay Commission. You didn’t even print my letter in response. And, what about your famous faux pas for which you got the nickname Shekhar Coupta!

  6. A spineless Journalist, Sekhar Gupta, who consults Minister Shushma Swaraj about his scoop. That means, he wasn’t confident about himself and his scoop! And last of all he goes and meets late J Anand to verify his facts in the scoop and comes back “deflated”.Please give up Journalism. You are not a model worth emulation.

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