New Delhi: Supreme Court’s courtroom 1 witnessed a rather unusual scene Friday as young lawyers stood with seniors to share their experiences and learnings from appearances before Justice Abhay S. Oka.
On Friday, a Ceremonial Bench, headed by Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai, assembled in courtroom 1 for Justice Oka’s farewell. The bench mirrored the retiring judge’s court, where lawyers from diverse backgrounds and age groups received equal treatment.
From the attorney general to senior advocates and newcomers, including one who started his legal career as a judicial clerk with Justice Oka, everyone had the opportunity Friday to express their gratitude to the retiring judge, whose last working day is Saturday.
The Ceremonial Bench sat for nearly one and a half hours—a rarity in the Supreme Court.
“The only judges I can think of who got such an affectionate farewell were Justices L.N. Rao and ex-CJI U.U. Lalit,” said a senior advocate on the condition of anonymity. “They, for long, had practised in the Supreme Court before their elevation to the bench. So, it was truly an emotional moment to see them in the court for the last time.”
But Justice Oka’s farewell was different.
“For a judge who spent a little over three years in the top court, the send-off was a profound reflection of his judicial legacy, the body of work he created in such a short span and his commitment towards safeguarding personal liberty,” the lawyer added.
“The four ‘I’s associated with a judge were, clearly, visible in you,” senior advocate S. Guru Krishnamurthy told Justice Oka during the farewell. “Intellect, integrity, independence and industry,” he added.
The retiring judge also earned praise for his attendance in the court despite suffering a personal tragedy.
Justice Oka lost his mother Wednesday evening and left for Thane, where her last rites took place Thursday morning, but he came back to Delhi the same evening. He also held court Friday morning, delivering 11 judgments reserved for long by his bench.
After the pronouncements, Justice Oka joined CJI Gavai and Justice Augustine Masih at the ceremonial bench, which, in line with the customary ritual, had sat for the retiring judge’s farewell.
However, this was not the first time Justice Oka had prioritised official work over personal losses. CJI Gavai recalled how Justice Oka, as a judge of the Bombay High Court, did not take leave even when he lost his father.
“I remember him telling all the colleagues that they should visit him in the chamber to offer their condolences—instead of going home,” the CJI told a packed courtroom during the farewell ceremony. CJI Gavai and Justice Oka were colleagues in the Bombay High Court.
“Guardian of personal liberty”. “A firm judge”. “Humility personified”. That is how the Bar described Justice Oka.
Justice Oka, the son of renowned lawyer Shreeniwas W. Oka, graduated in science to become an engineer. He studied law later, and on 28 June 1983, he enrolled as an advocate, starting his practice in the Thane District Court.
Justice Oka first joined his father and then the chamber of Justice V.P. Tipnis, a former Bombay High Court judge who also served as the Lokayukta in Maharashtra.
The name of Justice Oka, on 15 February 2003, was recommended for elevation, but his warrant for appointment came after six months. In 2019, Justice Oka became the Karnataka High Court Chief Justice before his elevation to the Supreme Court in August 2021.
“My name was absent from the newspapers … It had come as a shock that I was going to be elevated,” he said during another farewell, a formal function organised by the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA). The gathering Friday evening included leading Supreme Court lawyers—again, a momentous occasion for a judge on the last working day.
Notwithstanding his reputation as a strict and no-nonsense judge, Justice Oka drew respect and admiration from the legal fraternity. It was because “he never lost the capacity to outrage justice”, said senior advocate Anitha Shenoy.
His tenure was marked with judgments not just postulating constitutional principles of liberty, fraternity, and equality but also their application in cases he decided.
His brief but significant orders in the anti-money laundering case diluted, to some extent, the 2022 Supreme Court verdict upholding the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and the sweeping powers vested in the Enforcement Directorate.
Also Read: A Bar gone ‘cold’—controversy over no farewell for Justice Bela Trivedi, strong rebuke from CJI
The legacy of Justice Oka
His judgment in 2024 created conditions for a small but meaningful check on the ED’s powers. In Tarsem Lal v Directorate of Enforcement, a Justice Oka-led bench underlined the fundamental principles of criminal jurisprudence to hold that the ED does not have the power to arrest an individual after a special PMLA court has taken cognisance of its case after the filing of a complaint indicating the agency’s probe is complete. The ED’s complaint is akin to a chargesheet filed by the police under the general penal law.
The bench emphasised that ED custody is primarily for investigation, not punishing an undertrial. The logic behind this judgment was clear—the investigating agencies arrest suspects to aid the investigation process. However, if a complaint exists, it shows that the agency did not need the person’s custody. There could be no point in getting custody after the conclusion of an investigation.
The judgment also added another layer of safeguard for a PMLA suspect—in case the accused have warrants issued against them due to their failure to appear before the court, they need not apply for bail under the special law but could apply for cancellation of the warrant under the criminal procedure code, a relatively simpler process.
Another of his judgments reinforced the rights of an accused to a fair trial. Justice Oka’s bench ruled that the ED was bound to list all documents and material collected during its investigation, including those not relied upon by the agency in its complaint, and hand the list over to the accused. This direction came in the background of difficulties in getting bail under the PMLA, which puts a reverse burden on the accused to prove their innocence in a money laundering case.
Possessing all documents will help the accused frame his defence—even for bail purposes—because those documents may contain evidence of an exculpatory nature due to which the agency may not use them, his bench observed.
If not in writing, his observations—given orally—left their mark too. Justice Oka never minced words while upbraiding investigation agencies for violating procedural safeguards or due process of law.
On several occasions, he came down heavily on the ED for “penalising” citizens by keeping them in custody, lamenting over the “process becoming a punishment” in PMLA cases.
“You (ED) are virtually penalising [the] person by keeping him in custody,” he told ED during a hearing of the Nagrik Apurti Nigam scam case.
He slammed the agency earlier this year for suppressing vital information and using the PMLA to keep a former excise officer incarcerated, asking if the PMLA was “being misused” like the dowry law.
Justice Oka always defended free speech rights, which he saw as the Constitution’s essential feature. While quashing a sedition case file in Maharashtra, he observed that the “right to dissent” legitimately and lawfully is an “integral part of the rights” guaranteed by the Constitution. The FIR against the accused came after his criticism of the abrogation of Article 370, besides for wishing Pakistan on its independence day.
Days before his retirement, Justice Oka, sitting with Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, granted bail to the banned Popular Front of India’s ex-secretary general, accused in the murder case of an RSS worker. He observed that having a different ideology is not a crime.
“This is the trend we find. It is because they have adopted a particular ideology [that they ended up in jail],” he told prosecuting agency NIA’s counsel.
Justice Oka’s sensitivity was not limited to human beings only. He was equally compassionate on environmental matters, and his orders ensured that authorities put proper measures in place to prevent irreparable harm to the ecology. Up till his last day in court, he heard air pollution-related matters in Delhi and NCR. His regular monitoring of the case gave rise to several orders, which mandated civic agencies and state governments to pursue practical remedies to improve the AQI levels in the Capital.
In another judgment, a Justice Oka-led bench delivered a big blow to the central government. No post-facto environmental clearances for development projects, it ruled while quashing the two central government notifications for such clearances, putting the mechanism on hold for future projects. The order, however, left project approvals granted so far unchanged.
The bench opined that environmental clearance after operations on a project that could harm public health had begun was contrary to the Constitution’s Article 21, which promises the rights to liberty and life. The rights, it declared, included a guarantee of a pollution-free environment.
Empathetic to ground realities, Justice Oka’s bench Friday exercised its extraordinary powers under the Constitution’s Article 142 to grant a reprieve to a POCSO convict. The judge called the case an eye-opener for everyone. The case involved a minor girl who fell in love with an adult man, married him, and had a child. On their behalf, the girl fought with her parents, who then lodged a POCSO case against the man.
Numbed by the ordeal of the girl, Justice Oka wrote that due to the “shortcomings in our society, the legal system and her family”, the girl suffered and could not make an informed choice at an earlier stage of life. She did not treat the incident as a heinous crime, so sentencing the man “troubled” the bench, observed Justice Oka. After convicting the man, the bench ordered his release under Article 142.
Justice Oka’s presence in court strengthened public faith in the institution, said senior advocate and former Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) vice-president Rachana Srivastava. During the Ceremonial Bench proceedings, she applauded him for his judicial humility and for applying the law to uplift and empower citizens and institutions.
Senior advocate Rishi Malhotra, who had come under fire from Justice Oka multiple times, summed up the constant endeavours of the retiring judge to discipline the Bar. Publicly apologising for irking the judge, he said, “I know it was my mistake, and I have learnt a lot from my lordship.”
As Srivastava said, Justice Oka’s legacy will be debated and discussed in the corridors of SC even in his absence.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)