Dear reader,
A few weeks ago, I came across a fascinating news - a survivor of the trumped up case built in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts case had put out a simple demand: Rs 9 crores compensation, a crore for each year of false imprisonment. Abdul Wahid Shaikh’s decision was likely triggered by the Bombay HC’s judgement in July acquitting all the accused persons in the case - Shaikh himself was acquitted in 2015 by a Special MCOCA Court.
Ten years later, in an engaging essay for The Leaflet, he reflects on the one piece of evidence that he feels towered over everything else in the case against him, and his co-accused - Section 18 of Maharashtra’s Organised Crime Act, which makes confessions to senior police officers admissible in court.
“Even though I had not confessed, the fact that my name appeared in the statements of two or three co-accused was enough to ensure I remained in jail for nearly a decade. Confessions did not just bind those who signed them; they became a chain dragging all of us, the accused, in prolonged imprisonment,” Shaikh writes.
The same week as the Bombay HC’s acquittal, in less known news the Bihar legislative assembly passed a new gig workers law - the only third in the country. It’s a great law - many experts have said - going one step ahead from Karnataka and Rajasthan, by statutorily recognising entitlements to accident compensation, maternity benefits. But it’s hardly good enough.
Labour law academic Saurabh Bhattacharjee and researcher Madhulika T write that the law’s recognition of welfare entitlements is contrasted by its restriction on trade unions - a fatal contradiction.
As we close, our parting thoughts are on the chief justice of India. More routinely, you may encounter our criticisms on the functioning of the Collegium, or our critically balanced profiles. But the attack on CJI Gavai last Monday by a right-wing hooligan (who has gone on record before news channels to state that he was irked by CJI Gavai’s comments against bulldozer raj) made us reflect more deeply. Even as there have been previous such incidents, this was motivated by hatred towards a chief justice hailing from a Dalit, Buddhist background; it was, as our co-founder Indira Jaising put it “a blatant casteist attack on the Supreme Court of India”. Our full report:
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Warmly,
Sushovan Patnaik,
Associate Editor, The Leaflet