New Delhi: The Supreme Court has continued its powerful onslaught against ‘bulldozer justice’ with a repetition of its stance today (November 13) that the executive cannot demolish a house because persons living in it are accused or convicted of a crime.
“The chilling sight of a bulldozer demolishing a building reminds one of lawlessness where might was right,” a bench of Justices B.R. Gavai and K.V. Viswanathan said, according to LiveLaw.
The bench was hearing multiple petitions filed by the Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind and others, seeking directions to stop the bulldozing of property as a method of delivering justice.
The court noted that the deliverance of such justice violated the principle of separation of powers, as well. It also amounted to imposing “collective punishment” on the families of the accused and convicted.
The court also noted that public officials who order and execute these demolitions should be hauled up. Earlier in the month, a three-judge bench comprising outgoing Chief Justice of India D.Y Chandrachud along with Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra directed the Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government to pay senior journalist Manoj Tibrewal a compensation of Rs 25 lakh after his ancestral house and shop were unlawfully demolished by officials for widening a road.
The judgment authored by Justice Gavai mentions a Hindi poem by Pradeep which goes, “To have one’s own home, one’s own courtyard – this dream lives in every heart. It’s a longing that never fades, to never lose the dream of a home.”
Justice Gavai then writes that it is a dream of every person, every family to have a shelter above their heads, before noting:
“An important question as to whether the executive should be permitted to take away the shelter of a family or families as a measure for infliction of penalty on a person who is accused in a crime under our constitutional scheme or not arises for consideration.”