In a rare move, the Supreme Court on Monday asked its former judge, Justice (Retd) Markandeya Katju, to appear in the court and justify his blog published on Facebook where he criticised the judgment in the sensational rape and murder of Soumya, a 23-year-old girl from Kerala on February 1, 2011.
Treating the blog post as a suo moto review petition, the bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi, PC Pant and UU lalit told the judge to appear before it on November 11, when it is expected to pronounce a decision on separate review petitions filed by the Kerala Government and the victim’s mother challenging the Court’s order of September 15.
Justice Katju, who is not new to controversy, in his blog dated September 16, 2016 commented that the judges “grievously erred” by acquitting the accused Govindaswamy of murder charges. He was found guilty only for rape for which the sentence awarded was life term. According to Katju, the judges “overlooked” the law contained in Section 300 of Indian Penal Code, where even if intention to kill is absent, murder will be made out, provided other elements under the same provision stand
proved.
The bench in its order issuing notice to Justice Katju said, “Such a view coming from a retired judge of this Court needs to be treated with greatest of respect and consideration…and request him to appear in Court in person and participate in the proceedings on November 11 at 2 pm as to whether the judgment and order dated September 15 passed by this bench suffers from any fundamental flaw so as to require exercise of the review jurisdiction.”
Already, the bench has completed hearing the state represented by Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi and the victim’s mother represented by senior advocate Siddharth luthra.
The bench had asked both the lawyers to explain whether there was anything to suggest that the accused could be held guilty of the murder of the 23-year old victim.
In its judgment, the apex court had noted the chain of evidence to conclude that the prosecution story projected that when the victim, who was travelling alone in a local train’s woman’s compartment, she was assaulted by the accused. This forced her to jump out of the moving train in order to escape. As she lay in an injured state, the accused raped her. She was later taken to a hospital where she succumbed to her injuries after five days.
The bench was convinced that all evidence pointed out that the accused was the author of the offence of rape but not single evidence was there on record to suggest that the girl was “compelled” to jump by the accused, in order to hold him guilty for murder.