 "Nikam and his peculiar art of winning high-profile cases")
In February this year, a special court in Mumbai convicted the extradited gangster Abu Salem, along with two others, of the 1995 murder of builder Pradip Jain. The public prosecutor on the case, appointed by the Maharashtra government, was the 61-year-old Jalgaon native, Ujjwal Nikam. At one point in the trial, Nikam argued that Salem deserved nothing less than the death sentence for this murder. He invoked the landmark cases of Bachan Singh and Macchi Singh; like the crimes under trial in those instances, he said, this counted as a "rarest of rare" case. The reporters in the room sighed. They had heard exactly the same arguments in at least two other cases Nikam had handled in the last year. The next day, Nikam conceded to the court that the death sentence was not permitted in this case, and sought a life sentence. On February 25, the court sentenced Salem to life imprisonment.
On March 20, on the sidelines of the International Conference on Counter Terrorism at the Marriott Hotel in Jaipur, Nikam was talking about biryani. The subject had previously come up in 2009, when he served as special public prosecutor in the trial of Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, the sole surviving gunman responsible for the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai. As the prosecution's lawyer, Nikam was the face - and voice - of the state's case against Kasab. One day, Nikam told journalists waiting outside the courtroom that Kasab was asking his jailors for mutton biryani. The story made headlines, entrenching an idea already held by many ordinary people - that in securing Kasab and giving him the benefit of the legal process, the state was subjecting itself to further victimisation at his hands.
It turned out that Nikam had lied. "Kasab never demanded biryani and was never served by the government," he told journalists in Jaipur. "I concocted it just to break an emotional atmosphere which was taking shape in favour of Kasab during the trial of the case." The press erupted all over again, this time against Nikam, who had lied with impunity, and no apparent remorse.
The biryani episode has provoked the most criticism Nikam has ever faced in an exceptional career. For over 20 years, he has been one of Mumbai's best-known lawyers. He first shot to fame when he was appointed special public prosecutor in the trial of the culprits of the serial bombings of 1993. The state government has since appointed Nikam as public prosecutor on some of the most attention-grabbing cases in Maharashtra. Since the Kasab trial, in particular, it seems that if a case makes the headlines, the demand for justice -whether from the injured party or the public at large - usually involves a call for Nikam. A public prosecutor who is able to get convictions - and death sentences - can help build a narrative about the case, and demonstrate the state's zeal in combating injustice. He or she could also potentially skew public debate and inflame passions, while steering attention away from the state's ineptness in probing a case or preventing a crime. Perhaps this is why Nikam has been celebrated, praised and kept close by political leaders in Maharashtra for most of his time in the spotlight. "It does not matter which party is in power," he told me. "I get cases anyway."
Politicians of nearly every party and ideology in Maharashtra have lobbied at one point or another to give important cases to Nikam. "Even on the floor of the House, the opposition parties have asked for Nikam's appointment in certain cases," Satej Patil, a Congress Party leader who served as Maharashtra's minister of state (home department) during the previous government's tenure, told me. "I have personally seen him in court. He is confidence-inspiring. He knows the exact issues to highlight from the government's point of view." Part of his reputation rests on a real sense that Nikam is unmatched in his capacity for hard work, and that he will not take bribes to throw cases.
Not for money
As an independent lawyer, Nikam is hired for cases on a contractual basis. Last year, he was paid about Rs 40,000 per effective appearance, including Rs 10,000 as consultation fees and Rs 5,000 as accommodation. For much of his career, he has been provided round-the-clock security, which costs lakhs of rupees per year. In comparison, an ordinary prosecutor in Maharashtra earns, on average, Rs 3,000 for every effective hearing of cases of grave offences - such as murder, drug peddling or rape - and Rs 4,500 for a special case under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act in Mumbai. Fees reduce further outside the city.
But money is not Nikam's driving force; after all, he earns a fraction of what a defence counsel might earn on the same case. It seemed to me that the allure of being a household name had more to do with it. As he said to me at one point in our interviews, "Is there a lawyer in Maharashtra better known than me?"
Nikam graduated from law college in Jalgaon in 1977, and started out as a civil lawyer. The money was decent, but he was dissatisfied with the work. "While I was winning cases, I wasn't able to figure whether I was smart or not," he said. He then joined the Jalgaon district court as a district public prosecutor, and began to work on criminal cases. This, he claimed, was how he first came to the attention of the press. The media "loved the way I could turn a case around or interrogate a witness from a certain angle. I was also getting threats from the accused. People in the district were asking for me as a public prosecutor already."
One has to understand the grinding boredom of most courtrooms to understand why trials in which Nikam is the prosecutor stand out. In real life, court proceedings are achingly slow and drab. By contrast, a trial in which Nikam is the prosecutor is replete with histrionics, and he is always the star. He is hardly ever boring, especially for reporters listening in. He lightens the atmosphere of the courtroom by punctuating very serious arguments with humour. (Sometimes it is unintended: his unpolished English becomes comic relief for those more fluent in the language.)
Yet questions have been raised about how this aids justice, or brings relief to the victims on whose behalf he acts. Some of these questions became darkly relevant to the trial of the rapists in the Shakti Mills attack in Mumbai in 2013. In August that year, two young journalists, exploring the deserted mill area in central Mumbai, had been accosted, and the woman raped and threatened with murder by five men. After Nikam was appointed on this case, 50 public prosecutors wrote to Prithviraj Chavan and RR Patil, then Maharashtra's chief minister and home minister, respectively, raising the point that he had been appointed in spite of Supreme Court guidelines that mandate all-women courts in cases of sexual assault. "His appointment in these cases also means that the other cases are not important enough or we are not capable enough," said Anjali Waghmare, the additional public prosecutor who led the campaign. Nikam approached his duties in the manner of an avenging angel - he secured convictions for all the accused, and three men, found to be repeat offenders, were sentenced to death.
But his methods met with criticism again. Flavia Agnes, the feminist lawyer and co-founder of Mumbai's Majlis Legal Centre for women's rights, who appeared for the rape survivor, said that at the beginning of the trial, Nikam had disregarded the rape survivor's request for her statements to be recorded via video-conferencing, instead of in person. Testifying was hard on her, and she lost her composure when Nikam asked her to identify the pornographic clips that the rapists had played while attacking her. "She went to the judge's chambers and puked a little," Agnes told me. "In her absence, Nikam went out of court and told the media that she had fainted during her deposition."
Camera conscious
It is not uncommon for Nikam to pause, swipe through his hair with a tiny comb, and then step out of the courtroom at the end of a hearing to address cameras in English, Hindi and Marathi. This willingness to speak to television reporters is unusual in Mumbai, where even high-ranking police officials, who see it as part of the job to maintain good relations with the press, do not go on record to reporters on a daily basis. When he came out of the Bombay High Court after Kasab's death sentence was pronounced, he intoned: "Badle tumne rang bahut, bahut badle nakab; phaansi tak humnein tumhein la hi diya Kasab (You changed colours and you changed your masks, but I have you at the gallows after all, Kasab)."
An article in The Telegraph described the public celebration that ensued that day. Outside the court, Nikam was reportedly asked, "Sir, what's your score?" Nikam "beamed like a gladiator" and responded, "Thirty-eight death penalties and over 600 life terms." The crowd, not entirely made of journalists, could not resist the temptation to celebrate.
On March 20, on the sidelines of the International Conference on Counter Terrorism at the Marriott Hotel in Jaipur, Nikam was talking about biryani. The subject had previously come up in 2009, when he served as special public prosecutor in the trial of Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, the sole surviving gunman responsible for the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai. As the prosecution's lawyer, Nikam was the face - and voice - of the state's case against Kasab. One day, Nikam told journalists waiting outside the courtroom that Kasab was asking his jailors for mutton biryani. The story made headlines, entrenching an idea already held by many ordinary people - that in securing Kasab and giving him the benefit of the legal process, the state was subjecting itself to further victimisation at his hands.
It turned out that Nikam had lied. "Kasab never demanded biryani and was never served by the government," he told journalists in Jaipur. "I concocted it just to break an emotional atmosphere which was taking shape in favour of Kasab during the trial of the case." The press erupted all over again, this time against Nikam, who had lied with impunity, and no apparent remorse.
The biryani episode has provoked the most criticism Nikam has ever faced in an exceptional career. For over 20 years, he has been one of Mumbai's best-known lawyers. He first shot to fame when he was appointed special public prosecutor in the trial of the culprits of the serial bombings of 1993. The state government has since appointed Nikam as public prosecutor on some of the most attention-grabbing cases in Maharashtra. Since the Kasab trial, in particular, it seems that if a case makes the headlines, the demand for justice -whether from the injured party or the public at large - usually involves a call for Nikam. A public prosecutor who is able to get convictions - and death sentences - can help build a narrative about the case, and demonstrate the state's zeal in combating injustice. He or she could also potentially skew public debate and inflame passions, while steering attention away from the state's ineptness in probing a case or preventing a crime. Perhaps this is why Nikam has been celebrated, praised and kept close by political leaders in Maharashtra for most of his time in the spotlight. "It does not matter which party is in power," he told me. "I get cases anyway."
Politicians of nearly every party and ideology in Maharashtra have lobbied at one point or another to give important cases to Nikam. "Even on the floor of the House, the opposition parties have asked for Nikam's appointment in certain cases," Satej Patil, a Congress Party leader who served as Maharashtra's minister of state (home department) during the previous government's tenure, told me. "I have personally seen him in court. He is confidence-inspiring. He knows the exact issues to highlight from the government's point of view." Part of his reputation rests on a real sense that Nikam is unmatched in his capacity for hard work, and that he will not take bribes to throw cases.
Not for money
As an independent lawyer, Nikam is hired for cases on a contractual basis. Last year, he was paid about Rs 40,000 per effective appearance, including Rs 10,000 as consultation fees and Rs 5,000 as accommodation. For much of his career, he has been provided round-the-clock security, which costs lakhs of rupees per year. In comparison, an ordinary prosecutor in Maharashtra earns, on average, Rs 3,000 for every effective hearing of cases of grave offences - such as murder, drug peddling or rape - and Rs 4,500 for a special case under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act in Mumbai. Fees reduce further outside the city.
But money is not Nikam's driving force; after all, he earns a fraction of what a defence counsel might earn on the same case. It seemed to me that the allure of being a household name had more to do with it. As he said to me at one point in our interviews, "Is there a lawyer in Maharashtra better known than me?"
Nikam graduated from law college in Jalgaon in 1977, and started out as a civil lawyer. The money was decent, but he was dissatisfied with the work. "While I was winning cases, I wasn't able to figure whether I was smart or not," he said. He then joined the Jalgaon district court as a district public prosecutor, and began to work on criminal cases. This, he claimed, was how he first came to the attention of the press. The media "loved the way I could turn a case around or interrogate a witness from a certain angle. I was also getting threats from the accused. People in the district were asking for me as a public prosecutor already."
One has to understand the grinding boredom of most courtrooms to understand why trials in which Nikam is the prosecutor stand out. In real life, court proceedings are achingly slow and drab. By contrast, a trial in which Nikam is the prosecutor is replete with histrionics, and he is always the star. He is hardly ever boring, especially for reporters listening in. He lightens the atmosphere of the courtroom by punctuating very serious arguments with humour. (Sometimes it is unintended: his unpolished English becomes comic relief for those more fluent in the language.)
Yet questions have been raised about how this aids justice, or brings relief to the victims on whose behalf he acts. Some of these questions became darkly relevant to the trial of the rapists in the Shakti Mills attack in Mumbai in 2013. In August that year, two young journalists, exploring the deserted mill area in central Mumbai, had been accosted, and the woman raped and threatened with murder by five men. After Nikam was appointed on this case, 50 public prosecutors wrote to Prithviraj Chavan and RR Patil, then Maharashtra's chief minister and home minister, respectively, raising the point that he had been appointed in spite of Supreme Court guidelines that mandate all-women courts in cases of sexual assault. "His appointment in these cases also means that the other cases are not important enough or we are not capable enough," said Anjali Waghmare, the additional public prosecutor who led the campaign. Nikam approached his duties in the manner of an avenging angel - he secured convictions for all the accused, and three men, found to be repeat offenders, were sentenced to death.
But his methods met with criticism again. Flavia Agnes, the feminist lawyer and co-founder of Mumbai's Majlis Legal Centre for women's rights, who appeared for the rape survivor, said that at the beginning of the trial, Nikam had disregarded the rape survivor's request for her statements to be recorded via video-conferencing, instead of in person. Testifying was hard on her, and she lost her composure when Nikam asked her to identify the pornographic clips that the rapists had played while attacking her. "She went to the judge's chambers and puked a little," Agnes told me. "In her absence, Nikam went out of court and told the media that she had fainted during her deposition."
Camera conscious
It is not uncommon for Nikam to pause, swipe through his hair with a tiny comb, and then step out of the courtroom at the end of a hearing to address cameras in English, Hindi and Marathi. This willingness to speak to television reporters is unusual in Mumbai, where even high-ranking police officials, who see it as part of the job to maintain good relations with the press, do not go on record to reporters on a daily basis. When he came out of the Bombay High Court after Kasab's death sentence was pronounced, he intoned: "Badle tumne rang bahut, bahut badle nakab; phaansi tak humnein tumhein la hi diya Kasab (You changed colours and you changed your masks, but I have you at the gallows after all, Kasab)."
An article in The Telegraph described the public celebration that ensued that day. Outside the court, Nikam was reportedly asked, "Sir, what's your score?" Nikam "beamed like a gladiator" and responded, "Thirty-eight death penalties and over 600 life terms." The crowd, not entirely made of journalists, could not resist the temptation to celebrate.
This is an extract reprinted with permission from The Caravan, May 2015
© Delhi Press. www.caravanmagazine.in
© Delhi Press. www.caravanmagazine.in