Roy caught in the crossfire of Indian judicial power struggle
Acclaimed writer could be jailed for contempt after calling for disabled professor to be freed
HER tale of bitter rivalries between castes, religions and Communist zealots in the tropical south of 1960s India won her a Booker Prize.
But Arundhati Roy could be jailed for contempt after getting caught up in a rivalry between two Indian courts.
The author of The God of Small Things is accused of making “scandalous and scurrilous allegations” in an article she wrote in May last year calling for the release on bail of a professor accused of belonging to a banned Maoist group.
She wrote there was “much to suggest” that the authorities did not want Prof GN Saibaba to “come out of the Nagpur central jail alive”.
But according to a former judge, the contempt charge has highlighted an internal power struggle between the Bombay High Court, as it is still officially known, and the Nagpur bench.
The High Court houses the chief justice of Maharashtra, whose jurisdiction over the entire state includes Nagpur.
As such last June, then-chief justice Mohit Shah intervened to grant the wheelchair-bound professor bail on medical grounds. But when Prof Saibaba’s bail came up for renewal in December, Justice Arun Chaudhari, the Nagpur judge, issued a wide-ranging judgment complaining that the “random transfer of cases” was undermining the authority of his court.
He also ordered Prof Saibaba to return to prison, and initiated contempt proceedings against Ms Roy.
But according to Babu Marlapalle, a senior advocate at India’s Supreme Court, that ruling was “nothing short of judicial impropriety”.
The former Mumbai judge said it was the result of a “sectarian attitude” and threatened public trust in the courts. He added: “If a layman said this was a contemptuous order I would not disagree with him.”
Ms Roy’s lawyers contend that the row over jurisdiction led directly to the charges. According to court documents shown to The Sunday Telegraph, evidence compiled by advocates of the Nagpur court to “assist” the High Court on the issue of “random transfer of cases” included a copy of Ms Roy’s article.
It was on this basis that Justice Chaudhari issued contempt charges, they allege, and say this chain of events makes the charges “without jurisdiction”.
According to Rebecca John, Prof Saibaba’s lawyer, his condition deteriorates the longer he remains in prison, deprived of the care he needs.
For Ms Roy, the charges are the latest in a string of feuds with the establishment. In 2002, she was convicted of contempt and sentenced to a “symbolic” one-day imprisonment for comments made in a protest over a dam.
In 2010 she faced sedition charges for arguing that Kashmir was not an integral part of India.
India’s Supreme Court is expected to convene on Ms Roy’s latest controversy this Friday. Her lawyers will not only raise the alleged impropriety of the judgment, but also seek to convince justices that the bar for what should constitute contempt ought to be higher than a magazine article pleading for a disabled professor’s freedom.
But regardless of the outcome, it is unlikely to be her final clash with the courts. “The Indian state seems to overreact to her in a way they don’t with everyone else,” said Chiki Sarkar, a leading publisher. “She says things that no one else does.”