Judiciary must be made accountable to the people

The Supreme Court of India is presently dealing with a case which has brought rampant corruption in the judiciary to light. As many as 26 senior judges, including one judge of the Supreme Court itself, along with 13 serving or retired High Court judges, have been named in the “Ghaziabad judges’ scam”.

Beginning sometime in the year 2001, large amounts of funds totalling at least Rs. 70 million were withdrawn from the Ghaziabad District Treasury in the name of Provident Fund advances to various Class III and Class IV employees of the Ghaziabad District Court.  These funds were withdrawn from the Treasury in the name of some real and some fictitious persons.  Even the withdrawals made in the name of serving employees were clearly fraudulent since these persons were not entitled to these provident fund advances! The payments over a period of seven years had been sanctioned by at least 6 to 7 successive District Judges.

A senior officer of the Treasury has made a confessional statement under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) in the presence of a magistrate, (which cannot be retracted later and hence is fully admissible as legal evidence). According to this statement, a large part of these funds which were withdrawn in the name of Provident Fund advances were used for payment of various household articles such as house construction materials, air conditioners, mobile phones, refrigerators, furniture, etc., which were supplied to a large number of sitting and retired judicial officers including some who were High Court judges, and a Supreme Court Judge.  This official also produced a large number of documents which showed the purchase of these items from various dealers in Ghaziabad and also the transport of many of these items to the residences of many of these judges.

What was the response of the higher judiciary to this case? While the Ghaziabad police filed an FIR against a number of lower court staff for their role in the scam, it did not file an FIR against the 26 judges who were involved, despite the overwhelming prima facie evidence against them. The fact is that the judiciary has armed itself with special powers and immunity so that the police has to make an application to the Chief Justice before even registering an FIR against judges! The Superintendent of Police of Ghaziabad was not even allowed to verbally interrogate the judges, but was instead directed by the Supreme Court to submit a written questionnaire to the judges concerned. Clearly, this was a blatant attempt by the judiciary to protect its own people.

It is common knowledge that corruption in the judicial system is rampant. Despite the attempt to play down such incidents as ‘aberrations’, the judiciary is very much part of the parasitic state apparatus inherited by the present rulers of India from the colonialists. In colonial times, its role was to uphold the colonial law which sanctioned brutal exploitation of the land and labour of the Indian people by the colonialists. Today, the judiciary has the role of upholding and regulating the exploitative system in present-day conditions. In recent times, judgements by the higher judiciary have upheld the ‘right’ of big capitalists to take over the land of peasants for Special Economic Zones. On the other hand, it has, with swift stokes of the judicial pen, taken away the rights of the toilers won through decades of struggle, such as the admittedly scanty protection afforded by labour laws.

Hence it is becoming increasingly clear to large masses of working people that the claim that the judiciary is ‘independent’ and upholds ‘justice for all’ is far from true. The judiciary is being increasingly used to enact and enforce those anti-people decrees which the executive shies away from because of electoral considerations arising from the adverse reaction from the masses of the people. This is why the judiciary has been given sweeping and arbitrary powers and insulation from all investigation even in cases of blatant wrongdoings as in the Ghaziabad Courts Scam.

The demand that the judiciary must be made accountable to the people is completely just. Peoples’ Voice fully supports the demand that the judiciary in a modern state must be made fully accountable to the people, in whom sovereignty must vest. This struggle is a component part of the struggle of the toiling people for empowerment.