Justice Cannot Be Either Partial Or Limited

The Supreme Court of India’s willingness to examine certain aspects of the Bombay High Court verdict of May this year, acquitting 22 persons—21 of them policemen from Gujarat and Rajasthan—in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh ‘fake encounter’ case but firmly declining to examine Para 43 of the verdict that pertains to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, is a grim reminder of the faultlines in the judicial domain. The three-judge Bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi, and Justice V Mohana was determined that it would not re-examine the entire case relating to the encounter killing of Shaikh and his wife, Kauser Bi, in November 2005, and their friend Tulsiram Prajapti a year later.

Background To The Case

Shaikh, a notorious wheeler-dealer, facing dozens of criminal cases, was arrested on the Gujarat-Rajasthan border and charged with carrying arms and plotting to attack Narendra Modi, then Gujarati chief minister and, since May 2014, the Prime Minister of India. Shah was then the home minister in his cabinet. It must be recalled that in 2010, the SC had transferred the case to the CBI and the trial to Mumbai. Shah was discharged in the case in December 2014 by Special CBI Judge MB Gosavi. His predecessor, Judge BH Loya, was mysteriously found dead earlier that month. The trial court first ordered the acquittals of the 22 accused in December 2018. These were upheld by the Bombay High Court in May.

Limited Review Raises Questions

The SC has, in a sense, attempted to square the circle but in vain. By not throwing out the appeal by Shaikh’s younger brother, Rubabuddin Shaikh, it has demonstrated that the doors of the apex court are open even in cases that once counted powerful people as accused. However, the judges asking only to “see statements of some witnesses… you give us whatever 3-4 statements you feel are vital” places an inexplicable self-imposed limit. Such a review cannot substitute the re-opening of the case, which would have re-examined all the evidence, probed the trails that suddenly went cold, and gotten to the bottom of why as many as 92 witnesses turned hostile, leading to the acquittals.

In its specific refusal pertaining to Shah’s discharge, the SC has unsurprisingly played safe. Had it agreed to revisit, it would have set a contemporary benchmark for an independent, robust, and fearless judiciary. Not only has the opportunity been tossed away, but its observations on the application seeking the reversal of Shah’s discharge—“an oblique motive” filed by “some political adversary of Shah”—have unfortunately buttressed the propaganda that the challenge is politically motivated. The twists and turns in the case called for a thorough re-examination by the SC. The limited review is unlikely to lead to convictions, leaving open the question 21 years later: who killed Sohrabuddin Shaikh, Kauser Bi, and Prajapati?

Published on: Tuesday, September 29, 2026, 08:38 PM IST