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Mumbai: After seeking
pardon for actor Sanjay Dutt and Zaibunissa Kazi, found guilty in
the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case, retired Supreme Court judge
Markandey Katju is set to launch an NGO to offer justice to poor
and helpless people.
The NGO, "The Court of Last Resort" will be headquartered in New
Delhi, and have branches in the states. It will be inaugurated
formally April 15, at a function in the capital at Katju's home.
"It has been felt for quite some time that injustice is being done
to a large number of people who have been languishing in jail
either as undertrials whose cases have not been heard for several
years, or who have unjustly remained incarcerated because the
police have fabricated evidence against them, or for want of
proper legal assistance or who have had to spend many years in
jail and (were) ultimately found innocent by the court," Justice
Katju explained, on his blog.
The NGO will use Right to Information (RTI) and other means to
obtain details of undertrials and convicts incarcerated in jails.
Depending on the legal resources necessary, the NGO would then
intervene and seek bail for those languishing wrongly in jails, or
facing delayed trial.
In cases deserving of pardon, the NGO will seek suspension or
reduction of sentences for the concerned undertrials by knocking
on the doors of the president or respective state governors.
During his visit to Mumbai two days ago, Justice Katju held
meetings with top criminal lawyer Majeed Memon, activist-filmmaker
Mahesh Bhatt, and social crusaders to give shape to the NGO, based
on Erle Stanley Gardner's famous "The Court of Last Resort", a
popular TV series of the 1950s in the US that dealt with cases of
miscarriages of justice of helpless undertrials in US prisons in
the 1940s.
Lawyer Memon, who has fought several cases of accused in the 1993
blasts and other similar cases, said that Katju would be the chief
patron and noted counsel Fali S. Nariman would be chairman of the
NGO.
The two vice-presidents will be Memon and Bhatt.
In his blog on the issue, Katju recalled the case of a 17-year-old
Ami who spent 14 years in jail before being declared innocent and
released at age 31.
"Many such persons in jail belong to minorities who have been
accused only on suspicion and on pre-conceived notions that all
persons of that community are terrorists," Katju said, adding that
under pressure to solve cases, the police often fabricated
evidence against Muslim youths in terror cases.
"All this is triggering new cycles of hate and revenge. Despair
turns citizens into perpetrators (of crime), from the hunted to
the hunter. Young men who have spent long years in jail cannot
find jobs or houses to rent even when acquitted, their families
are ostracized, and sisters find themselves unmarriageable because
their brothers have been branded as terrorists," he said.
"Unless this cycle of hate is now reversed, we are heading for
terrible times, for injustice breeds hatred and violence," Katju
noted.
"The result of all this is that in our country gross injustice is
often done, particularly to minorities, and the time has now come
when this great wrong must be set right. Our country is a country
of great diversity and therefore no community must be made to feel
that it is being selectively victimised," Katju said on his blog.
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