Letters: High hopes

With reference to M J Antony's column, "Challenging year ahead for the Supreme Court" (December 30), two judgements delivered by the apex court this year raised eyebrows. One was its decision to re-criminalise homosexuality, the other was to set aside the two-year imprisonment of the accused in the Uphaar Cinema fire case on the ground that they were old - instead, the court decided to imposed a fine of Rs 30 crore on each of them.

The Uphaar tragedy occurred in 1997 when the accused, Sushil Ansal and Gopal Ansal, were not old. The verdict on the case gave the impression that the rich have the option to wriggle out of criminal liability.

This apart, the Supreme Court's hearing of the case concerning the appointment of judges seemed odd as one of the principles of natural justice is that a man cannot be a judge in his own case.

Furthermore, even as the number of pending cases keeps increasing, the Supreme Court does not seem to be making much effort to fill up the large number of vacancies - in high courts alone, 40 per cent of the posts are vacant.

This is not to undermine the pivotal role the judiciary plays in protecting the innocent. But as the other two organs of democracy - the legislature and the executive - fail, expectations from the judiciary go up.

Y G Chouksey Pune

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