The apex court rings its own chain

In 1605, connected his accession, the Mughal Emperor Jahangir fastened a concatenation extracurricular his palace. Any taxable denied justness by his medication could propulsion the concatenation and scope the emperor directly. The concatenation was, successful conception, a remedy against the bureaucracy. The Indian Supreme Court is now, successful its suo motu cognisance of idiosyncratic transgression cases, the bureaucracy itself, ringing its ain mentation of the chain. Each televised listing is the dependable of the apex tribunal calling attraction to itself.

Media and motive

The latest lawsuit is the court’s suo motu cognisance of Twisha Sharma’s death, registered nether the rubric ‘In Re Alleged Institutional Bias and Procedural Discrepancies successful the Unnatural Death of a Young Girl astatine Her Matrimonial Home’. The rubric prejudges its ain inquiry. Institutional bias has not been judicially established astatine immoderate level. The apex court’s ain bureau report, signed by the Assistant Registrar connected May 23, records the ground of registration. The lawsuit was registered, the papers says, ‘based connected media reports and different attending circumstances’. Two days later, the aforesaid seat appealed to the media to refrain from signaling statements of witnesses. A tribunal that acts connected property reports portion admonishing the journalists who filed them is, astatine the aforesaid moment, some user and professional of the aforesaid source. 

The crushed connected which the apex tribunal arrived was not vacant. A magistrate successful Bhopal had remanded the husband, a practising advocate, to 7 days of constabulary custody. The Madhya Pradesh High Court had directed a 2nd autopsy by an AIIMS Delhi team. The Bar Council of India had suspended the husband’s licence. The State authorities had projected transferring the probe to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) earlier the apex listing. The institutions whose bias the apex rubric alleges had been moving against the accused for astir a fortnight.

Marc Galanter and Vasujith Ram enactment the cardinal question to this reflex with care. Their survey appears successful A Qualified Hope (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Why does the effect of the higher judiciary to enforcement oregon constabulary nonaccomplishment instrumentality ‘the signifier of these singular heroic interventions alternatively than promoting immoderate organization shake-up, immoderate inaugural to empower and equip courts little successful the judicial hierarchy’? Their diagnosis was unsparing. The reflex carries, they wrote, ‘an echo of the disdain with which higher courts successful India often dainty the efforts of the little judiciary’.

Easier path

Suo motu cognisance, successful matters of this kind, is the easier of the 2 paths unfastened to the apex court. The harder way is the slow, unspectacular enactment of reforming the judiciary it heads. The archetypal requires lone the bench’s determination to database the matter. The 2nd requires sustained cooperation: with the High Courts connected lawsuit absorption and supervision nether Article 235 (control implicit subordinate courts), with State governments connected backing trial-court infrastructure, with the enforcement connected judicial appointments, and with the National Judicial Academy connected training. The asymmetry betwixt the energies devoted to the 2 paths is what produces the diagnosis Galanter and Ram named.

Where the easier way is taken, the tribunal chooses persuasion implicit compulsion. The apex seat has, successful Sahara India Real Estate Corporation v. SEBI (2012), a five-judge Constitution Bench authorization connected media trial. Sahara permits a tribunal to contented a postponement bid against media publication. The trial is simply a existent and important hazard of prejudice to the medication of justice. The bid is disposable lone wherever nary little restrictive means volition work. The doctrine is settled. In the Twisha matter, the seat had each juncture to invoke it. It chose alternatively to petition the media not to grounds statements of imaginable witnesses. A petition from the apex tribunal carries motivation weight. But it is not the ineligible instrumentality it has astatine manus for this precise problem.

The post-2019 grounds is unkind to the pro-suo-motu case. In the R.G. Kar matter, the Supreme Court registered cognisance connected August 18, 2024. Sanjay Roy had been arrested by the Kolkata Police 8 days earlier. The Calcutta High Court had handed the probe to the CBI connected August 13, 2024. The Sealdah proceedings tribunal convicted Roy successful January 2025 and sentenced him to beingness imprisonment. The proceedings justice did the work. Apex monitoring of CBI presumption reports did not.

Hathras is person to the Bhopal facts and much instructive. The Lucknow seat of the Allahabad High Court registered the case suo motu successful October 2020. The Supreme Court, aft entertaining transportation petitions, handed monitoring backmost to the High Court wrong weeks. That earlier seat saw the architectural point: the High Court was already successful motion, and the apex relation was supervisory. In July 2024, pursuing the Hathras Satsang stampede that claimed 121 lives, the tribunal declined a PIL. The seat said that the High Court was equipped to woody with the case. The aforesaid rule applies successful Bhopal too.

Scarce attention

Lakhimpur Kheri sharpens the matter. The apex tribunal took cognisance successful October 2021 and, successful April 2022, acceptable speech the High Court’s bail bid for the main accused, Ashish Mishra. It past eased him backmost into liberty. Interim bail came successful 2023. Regular bail followed successful 2024. As of aboriginal 2026, the proceedings tribunal had examined lone 44 of 131 witnesses. In Manipur, the suo motu lawsuit implicit the viral video from July 2023 has yet to nutrient a conviction. Apex supervision has not been the way to faster justice.

A 2nd reflection runs alongside. In 2019, Galanter and Ram called suo motu ‘rare but highly visible’. The archetypal fractional of that statement has lapsed. What was erstwhile a residual jurisdiction is present a recurring instrument. A trigger series has begun to repeat. Sustained primetime attraction is followed by cognisance. The Solicitor General has present confirmed the series successful unfastened court. Appearing for the Union successful the Twisha matter, helium told the seat that ‘it is besides due to the fact that of this media involution that a batch of advancement has happened’.

The numbers since the chapter, authored by Galanter and Ram, went to property corroborate the rule. The Supreme Court Observer, moving from the apex court’s ain Case Status records, counts 35 suo motu matters successful the 5 years from 2020 to 2024. The preceding 15 years had seen lone 31 successful total. The yearly figures, excluding contempt, were 10 successful 2020, 8 successful 2021, 1 successful 2022, 4 successful 2023, and 12 successful 2024. The inclination continues. In 2025, the court’s numbering reached 10 civilian suo motu writs and 3 transgression matters. Nine of the 10 civilian matters are publically listed. By May 25 this year, the number already stood astatine 4 civilian and 4 transgression matters. Both totals exclude suo motu transportation and contempt, which workout chiseled law powers. The transgression count, successful particular, has risen sharply. Four months and 3 weeks person already exceeded the transgression number for each of 2025.

Judicial attraction is simply a scarce resource. The National Crime Records Bureau recorded 6,450 dowry deaths successful 2022, with convictions successful lone 11 to 17 per cent of cases. The tribunal has the capableness to database one. The criterion of enactment is, connected the contiguous record, temporal alternatively than legal. Galanter and Ram closed their section with a question. They asked whether suo motu was ‘an lawsuit of effectual usage of the scarce assets of judicial attention’. The 7 years since they wrote person not produced an easier answer.

None of this is to contradict the seriousness of the Twisha Sharma matter. The accused’s parent is simply a retired judge. The hubby is simply a lawyer. The household of the deceased has crushed to fearfulness section proximity. The law effect to that fearfulness is autarkic probe nether judicial supervision, conducted promptly. The court, however, disposed of the substance connected the archetypal time aft taking enactment of the “narrative” successful the media that a just probe was being denied connected relationship of the engagement of the judiciary.

The concatenation Jahangir hung was a remedy against an unaccountable bureaucracy. The apex tribunal is present that bureaucracy. Each televised listing is the dependable it makes to gully attraction to a nonaccomplishment it has the power, and the law duty, to repair. Until the harder of its 2 paths is walked with the vigor present devoted to the easier one, the concatenation volition support ringing. The proceedings courts beneath it volition support doing the work.

(V. Venkatesan is simply a writer and ineligible researcher.)