The jailing of NewsClick’s Prabir Purkayastha shows there was never a golden age of justice in India

Some 600 senior lawyers wrote an open letter to the Chief Justice of India expressing concern about perceived attempts to undermine the integrity of the judiciary.

The letter dated March 26 “expresses deepest concern on the manner in which a vested interest group is trying to pressure the judiciary, influence judicial process and defame our courts on the basis of frivolous logic and state political agendas. ….they create false narratives of, a supposed ‘a better past’ and ‘golden period of the courts’ contrasting it with the happenings in the present”.

This letter seemed to be a response more to the three day seminar in February on the “Supreme Court’s Judicial Administration and Management and its Trend on cases Involving Civil Liberties and Political Rights” organised by the Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms.

The speakers at seminar included former judges of the Supreme Court as well senior and young lawyers. All of them expressed their distress about the way people across India were being arbitrarily arrested, detained and how long-established principles of bail were regularly being violated. One of the cases mentioned was the case filed against Newsclick, the news portal started by Prabir Purkayastha.

Let me say straightaway there has never been a golden age of justice for...

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