Courts erode themselves, via arbitrary denial of bail

The court hearing the 2G case denied Member of Parliament Kanimozhi and seven others bail, although prosecutors did not object to a majority of the bail pleas and said investigations are over except for some charges against A Raja.

On Friday, the Supreme Court granted Satyam promoter Ramalinga Raju and two others bail, on the ground that it served no useful purpose to keep them in jail any longer as investigations and presentation of evidence were more or less complete.

On the same day, the Kerala High Court called upon people to protest against price rise, calling it slow death. The two decisions on bail send out a very strange message: when investigations are complete and the accused are not in a position to obstruct investigations, they get bail in one instance, but not in another. If this seems to go against what people expect of the judiciary, the Kerala High Court’s observation is unexpected to a degree that can only be called breathtaking.

Is it the court’s job to call upon the people to revolt against the government? Should the judge now also give an opinion on the adequacy of monetary tightening carried out by the Reserve Bank of India, the propriety of crude prices rising and the unseemly weakness of the rupee that magnifies external price changes? Should people protest by occupying the Kochi stock exchange or by civil disobedience?

If the latter, should they disobey the courts as well? The judiciary is one of the few institutions of the nation that still retains legitimacy in popular perception. It is in no one’s interest to erode this faith. Arbitrary decisions and comments that fall outside the judiciary’s terrain in the constitutional scheme of things only serve to corrode popular trust and esteem.

In the 2G case, public anger had been created by the impression, instigated by a reckless notion on the part of the Comptroller and Auditor General, that the spectrum allocation had caused the nation a heavy loss. The court, after initial survey of the evidence, failed to frame this as a charge against the accused. Bail, rather than jail, would be appropriate for the accused as they stand trial, essentially for engineering unfair advantage for some companies over others.