Rupinder Singh Sodhi, a former judge of the Delhi High Court who argued for Moninder Singh Pandher in the Nithari case, tells SREELATHA MENON that justice is not about knee-jerk reactions.
The Allahabad High Court recently set free Pandher, who was facing death sentence, pronounced by a lower court. How do you explain this reversal of judgment?
It was the media that built up the Nithari case beyond proportion. It continued to feed people disinformation. The media is a powerful weapon if you feed people with wrong facts. The public is gullible and swallows what is thrown at it. In a court, charges are tested against law and evidence. That is not the case with the media. Why were we going after an innocent man? How can I or anyone be happy if an innocent man takes the blame for a crime he had no role in?
But given the fact that the children were brought to Pandher’s house and murdered there, is it possible that Pandher was in the dark?
How many times have you gone to your servant’s room? In the case of Pandher, the servant, Surinder Koli, lived in a separate room with a separate roof and a separate entrance at the back. And he never did anything when Pandher was at home. Pandher would come home at night, have a shot of whiskey, spend time with women and go to sleep.
So weren’t these girls procured by the servant?
No. Pandher got his girls himself. As for the servant, he would stand at the gate and ask girls who passed by if they wanted a job. He would then bring them in to meet the lady of the house (there was none) and strangulate them.
Was he sick?
He was crazy. He has been examined and found to be crazy. What I am saying is that Pandher got victimised for killing children, which he did not do. This was despite the fact that the Central Bureau of Investigation kept saying that he was innocent and was abroad when many of these murders took place. The sessions court judge sentenced him to death. It is such a shame that the judiciary should have to answer to the press. No judge should be weak enough to be influenced by the media. If he is, he or she should not occupy the position, or at least look at criminal cases.
Witnesses turning hostile and changing versions dogs many cases, like the Jessica Lal murder case. Is there a solution?
I cannot comment on this case as it is under the Supreme Court scrutiny.
What Pandher went through had a replay in the Arushi case. It is becoming common for people to be punished and then declared not guilty.
In the Arushi case, the investigation has not been able to give a clear picture. It is too premature to comment. You cannot deliver justice through knee-jerk reactions. We cannot blame anyone at this point in time as we don’t know the truth.
Maybe the truth won’t be known.
No, truth has a strange way of surfacing when one least expects it.
So, is there a need for a change in the judicial system or in the way the media deals with cases?
I firmly suggest that the media should only report facts and not investigate and get judgmental. It should report facts of what it has seen and desist from giving angles and slants. It should not create opinions and put pressure on investigators and courts.
Do you believe the judges should disclose their assets?
Their assets should be disclosed and scrutinised. This should be done for all those who occupy public offices, every bureaucrat, every judge. If anything amiss is found, the most stringent punishment should follow. The very fact that he is a judge puts him in a place where there should be zero tolerance for corruption. A judge has to rise above everything. He is like Caesar’s wife.
The recent allegations against Karnataka Chief Justice PD Dinakaran has put a question mark on the credibility of the judiciary.
Here, the question is also about the appropriateness of the selection procedure for judges. The Collegium of judges of Karnataka that made him a judge there, a chief justice there, and then the Collegium of the Supreme Court which recommended him for the Supreme Court, all these are answerable now. How was he made a chief justice? How was he recommended for the Supreme Court? The collegium has obviously failed.
Will the collegium be answerable for the faulty selection?
It should be.
The condition of undertrials in prisons is known but nothing is being done to stop their misery.
Do you know that 95 per cent of the people in jail are below poverty line. And most of them are undertrials. The rich get bail while the poor are too ignorant and too poor to bail themselves out. That is where the law should step in. You just cannot keep a man in jail unless necessary. It is wrong to do so. The government did consider releasing all those who were facing sentences of less than seven years. But in the last government, when the then law minister proposed reforms in the criminal procedure code, the lawyers went on strike and the reforms were stopped. Now, I don’t know if the new minister will take up a project that was wound up by his predecessor.
You said the poor never fight their cases or try to get out.
No no. They will sell everything to get out, but the tragedy is they will ultimately remain in jail.
Maybe they are safer inside.
Well, think about the harassment faced by a man who has served a sentence. He is caught again and again. At least he won’t be arrested again. As a judge in the high court, I used to give bails by the hundreds. I believe that bail is a right while jail is an exception.
