Bulldozer ‘justice’ is unacceptable under rule of law, says Supreme Court
Such practices are ‘unknown to any civilised system of jurisprudence’, a bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud said.
Join our WhatsApp Community to receive travel deals, free stays, and special offers!
- Join Now -
Join our WhatsApp Community to receive travel deals, free stays, and special offers!
- Join Now -
Bulldozer “justice” is unacceptable under the rule of law, and the government must follow due processes before removing allegedly illegal encroachments, the Supreme Court has said.
The court made the remark in a judgement on November 6, in which it directed the Uttar Pradesh government to pay Rs 25 lakh as compensation to a man whose home it said had been unlawfully demolished. The judgement was made publicly available on Saturday.
The man, a journalist named Manoj Tibrewal Akash, said his home was demolished in 2019 for a road-widening project in the Maharajganj district without the authorities giving him notice.
Akash alleged that the demolition was reprisal for “a newspaper report which contained allegations of wrongdoing in relation to the construction of the road in question”. The court said it did not need to engage with this allegation, except to the extent that it provided the background to his grievances.
However, a bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said that “justice” through bulldozers was “unknown to any civilised system of jurisprudence”.
The court added that citizens’ voices could not be throttled by the threat of destroying their properties. “The ultimate security which a human being possesses is to the homestead,” it noted.
The bench said that if such punitive...
