The Brave Pedestrian

  Holly Lee @LeeHolly81 tweeted this video on August 13 with the caption: Mike is a NH resident who voted for Trump. He has read the entire Mueller Report and believes Trump "committed more than 10" criminal offenses. "I cannot obey or support [the] continuation in office of a not-yet-convicted felon." #ProsecuteTrump

Mumbai, 14 March, 2015: Planning to kill yourself and your family after a tasty meal? Go to Golden Chariot Restaurant. Blocked fire-exits and various other dangerous practices makes this restaurant at Goregaon's Hub Mall your best bet at achieving a fiery death. Although activists like Shaikh Fakhruddin Junaid, Sulaiman Bhimani and myself have repeatedly pointed it out to Mumbai's Municipal Corporation and Mumbai Fire Brigade, the ability of Golden Chariot to bribe the powers-that-be and also abuse judicial processes has helped it to survive. But orders passed by MCGM and Fire Brigade in 2017 suggest that Golden Chariot's goose is being slowly cooked. After the restaurant finally caught fire on 29th December, 2016 (read newspaper reports here and here ), civic authorities are finding it difficult to dodge their responsibility to ensure public safety by sealing it. Deputy Municipal Commissioner Kiran Achrekar and Deputy Chief Fire Officer V N Panigrahi have ordere...

Mumbai, 12th February, 2017: Justice CS Karnan's reply to Supreme Court's contempt notice is heroically contemptuous. Based on this reply, one expects that the contempt hearing of India's judge-gone-berserk will probably have sensational disclosures about allegedly corrupt judges, particularly Chief Justice of Madras High Court SK Kaul. One is led to wonder whether Justice Karnan is on trial here, or India's judiciary is on trial! Read Justice Karnan's defiant reply to the contempt notice .   In Justice Karnan's reply to the suo motu contempt notice served on him by a seven-judge bench, he alleges that the notice issued is (a) bad in law (b) illogical (c) unethical (d) against natural justice (e) mala fide (f) biased along caste lines, and most importantly, (g) intended to shield Justice SK Kaul who is about to be elevated to the Supreme Court. Karnan's reply -- like Arundhat Roy's defiant reply in 2001 -- is almost certain to be h...

On New Year's eve, Modi-ji will make a surprise announcement, ordering that every Indian should be publicly spanked by the police. Bhakts will be seen lining up with bare bottoms in front of police stations, and advising us that it is every Indian's patriotic duty to accept their spanking gracefully and gratefully, so that the corrupt black-money hoarders get a spanking. Every patriotic Indian must stand in line and accept a public spanking for the good of the nation. "No other leader since Independence has had the great vision or the daring to spank the black-money hoard ers," the bhakts will proclaim. "Surely, after this spanking, nobody will dare to accept bribes or hoard black money again," they will argue, telling all of us khangresis , sickulars and leftists to take our pants off. After three days, our great prime minister will appear on television, shedding tears of joy and pride about how millions of Indians with reddened and bru...

Mumbai, 14 th July, 2016: I would not have believed it if I had'nt seen it with my own eyes. For many months, my client Tukaram Sutar had been insisting that the Jogeshwari Municipal Corporator Ujwala Modak was giving political support to the non-performing redevelopment builder and former managing committee members of his cooperative housing society... but I was skeptical. I asked him, "Where is the evidence? Has this corporator ever spoken or written letters to us, or interfered in our society's matters? No!" However, three days ago, when I found myself confronting Ujwala Modak at the society's hearing at the office of the Deputy Registrar of Cooperation (K-East Ward), Wadala, I realized that Mr Sutar was right. At the hearing, Ujwala Modak's conversation with Cooperation Department officials indicated that she had been meeting and phoning them for favourable orders.  After our heated argument, corporator Modak helped the society's chairman Mr...

1. What is Right to Information (RTI)? Right to Information means our right to get information from “public authorities”. Broadly speaking, RTI means that We The People have the right to procure copies of documents from State and Central Government, and other organizations that are controlled, or substantially owned and financed by the government. Right to Information Act 2005 (RTI Act 2005) is called the “Sunshine Act” , because it helps people like you and I -- the citizens of India – to make the government transparent. Also, just as sunlight destroys germs, the Sunshine Act helps the common man to fight against corruption, and to fight for getting his rights from various government authorities, and also from government-regulated private parties such as suppliers of various goods and services, builders and contractors, utility companies, etc. 2. What does RTI Act say? In a nutshell, the Right to Information Act says that any citizen of India has the righ...

In the face of continuous provocation by Markandeya Katju, why is Chief Justice Dattu silent and passive? if there is no substance in the retired SC judge's allegations, why isn't any action being taken against him? Why no Contempt of Court so far? Through his blog, http://justicekatju.blogspot.in/, Katju has been continually baiting Dattu, the establishment and also mainstream journalists for not investigating the issue based on his documents. It is easy to write this off as Katju's attention-seeking behaviour. But let us look deeper. His allegations are that the Chief Justice of India is a blatantly corrupt man who has amassed wealth by currying favour with the government, and by breaking laws. Can we as a nation afford to take such allegations lightly? If these allegations are true, impeach the Chief Justice of India. And if they are frivolous and unsubstantiated, then haul Katju (along with other critics like myself) over the coals. Let justice be seen to be done...

Justice Ruma Pal, a former Supreme Court judge, flayed the judiciary in a lecture that she delivered. Here is what she said: Judges are fierce in using the word [“independence”] as a sword to take action in contempt against critics. But the word is also used as a shield to cover a multitude of sins, some venial and others not so venial. Any lawyer practising before a court will, I am sure, have a rather long list of these. I have chosen seven. The first is the sin of “brushing under the carpet”, or turning a Nelsonian eye. Many judges are aware of injudicious conduct of a colleague but have either ignored it or refused to confront the judge concerned, and suppressed any public discussion on the issue, often through the great silencer — the law of contempt. The second sin is that of “hypocrisy”. A favourite rather pompous phrase in judgments is “Be you ever so high, the law is above you”, or words to similar effect. And yet judges who enforce the law for others often break tha...

Chapter IX: Namita’s Revenge Namita knew she was prostitute now. Worse, she knew she was a puppet in the Sub Inspector's hands. She was completely powerless, she was completely debased and she hated it. She hated Tony the pimp for his hand in it, but more than anybody else, she hated Gaitonde the policeman. This business about 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned' is greatly misunderstood. One traditionally thinks of  housewives turning nasty and throwing saucepans and rolling pins. Sometimes, people think of mistresses. Rarely, if ever, does it apply to prostitutes. Also this thing about 'Behind every great man, there is a great woman'. The phrase is understood as being applicable to wives who are extremely tolerant and supportive. It's rarely about the noble and selfless deeds of a prostitute. In the case of Gaitonde, however, this second phrase was perfectly applicable. One year was too short a period for out-of-turn promotions to materialize in...

Unlike the US justice system which has a "witness PROTECTION program", Indian judiciary has a "witness ELIMINATION program". Our courts systematically defeat the good intentions of witnesses, failing which they eliminate the witnesses themselves. They create conditions where witnesses are rewarded for turning hostile, and severely punished for being honest. At great personal risk and inconvenience, witnesses appear before the court in murder trials or trials involving offense s committed by rich and influential people (such as Salman Khan's hit-and-run case). But rather than recording the witnesses' statement at the earliest, judges mechanically give tareekh pe tareekh for many months and years... until the witnesses' stop being cooperative, or their memory fades, or they are intimidated and choose to keep quiet, or they sink into debt and financial distress, and stop coming to court, or they accept money to change their story, or they are silen...

About 50% of Indian magistrates (and 80% of public prosecutors) are widely known to take bribes for going easy on undertrials seeking bail. Magistrates safeguard themselves by channeling the bribes through policemen. Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

Judiciary's failure is the biggest cause of corruption in government & administration. Reform judiciary first, and 80% of government corruption will disappear. Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

The hypocrisy & secretiveness in judges' appointments and internal functioning of courts is widely known. It is frequently acknowledged even by judiciary's insiders. Why are We The People keeping quiet about this? Do we really believe that a non-transparent and non-democratic judiciary will give justice to us? It is time we stopped acting like SUBJECTS of the Imperial crown, and started acting like CITIZENS of free India. Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high... Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. -- Rabindranath Tagore Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share