Image Courtesy: afternoonvoice.com

Over 300 individuals, including legal eagles, human rights defenders, academics and ordinary citizens have written to Chief Justice of India NV Ramana expressing “deep distress at the imprisonment of Teesta Setalvad, RB Sreekumar and others.”

“They are being hounded because they chose to pursue justice for the over 2000 people who were killed in Gujarat in February 2002,” say the signatories including legal luminaries like Aspi Chinoy, Senior Advocates Indira Jaising, Anand Grover, CU Singh, Sanjay Hegde, historian Ram Guha, scholars R Doraiswamy, Shamsul Islam and Syed Naqvi, journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, activists Kavita Krishnan, Subhashini Ali, Tushar Gandhi, Kavita Srivastava, John Dayal, Lenin Raghuvanshi, Frazer Mascarenhas, Brinelle D’Souza, and lawyers Anas Tanwir, FA Ayyubi, Avani Bansal and many others.

They further say, “Subsequent to the Jaffri judgment, in a media interview, the home minister of the country, chose to comment on the court’s observations, in a manner calculated to cause arrests by the Gujarat police,” adding, “This sequence of events has sent a chilling message for the practice of law in the courts and for the rule of law in the country. It appears that a petitioner or a witness, who diligently pursues a cause in the courts, runs a risk of being “put in the dock” if the court deems the cause as devoid of merits.”

They have now called upon the Supreme Court to “suo-motu clarify” that its judgment in the Zakia Jafri case “was not intended to have any adverse consequences whatsoever.” They warn, “The absence of such clarification may lead to further consequences when bail is sought, by those whom we believe to have been unjustly imprisoned.”

The entire letter may be read here:

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