The Supreme Court concluded on Wednesday that the bars of a local jail were not enough to keep RJD MP and murder accused Mohd. Shahabuddin’s victims safe from the “nerve-wracking terror” he wields in his native constituency of Siwan district in Bihar.
A Bench led by Justice Dipak Misra used the extraordinary constitutional powers of the top court to order his transfer from Siwan Jail to Delhi’s Tihar Jail, where his murder trial will continue over video-conferencing.
The court found that it would be impossible for the victims and society to get justice because “utmost fear prevails and nerve-wracking terror reigns supreme in the locality [Siwan].”
It dismissed Mr. Shahabuddin’s claim that shifting him to a jail in another State would be similar to writing an “obituary” to the concept of fair trial. To this, Justice Misra, who wrote the 87-page judgment, responded that a “fair trial is not what the accused wants in the name of fair trial.”
“Fair trial in criminal jurisprudence is not a one-way traffic, but includes the accused and the victim, and it is the duty of the court to weigh the balance,” the Supreme Court held.
The Bench said a constitutional court has to necessarily balance the right of an accused with the right of the victims and society to decide on which side fairness stands. “When there is threat to life and liberty and fear pervades, it sends shivers down the spine and corrodes the basic marrows of holding of the trial at Siwan. This is quite far from the idea of fair trial. The grievance of the victims, who have enormously and apparently suffered, deserves to be dealt with as per the law of the land and should not remain a mirage and a distant dream,” Justice Misra wrote.
The court observed that the case of Mr. Shahabuddin, whom the court repeatedly called a “Type-A history sheeter,” is not a “normal and usual” one.
The judgment came on a petition filed by the wife of Rajdev Ranjan, a journalist based in Siwan who was shot dead in public allegedly after publishing several articles about Mr. Shahabuddin’s alleged criminal activities. Another petition was by Chanda Babu, whose three sons were allegedly murdered by Mr. Shahabuddin’s henchmen. Both said the accused continued to run a “parallel administration of fear” from the jail in Siwan.
“Shahabuddin should remain in Tihar jail for life … his very presence in Siwan, inside or outside the district jail, instils terror and trepidation in us and among people in general,” Mr. Chanda Babu told The Hindu.
Ms. Asha Ranjan, wife of the slain journalist and a school teacher told The Hindu over phone: “It is a historical court order for me, which makes me hopeful justice will be done ... I welcome this court order for, if he [Mohd. Shahabuddin] would have been in Siwan jail, he would have done anything from influencing witnesses to terrorising people.”
Earlier, Ms. Ranjan had received threatening phone calls from “some Gulf countries” asking her not to name Mr. Shahabuddin in her husband’s murder case. She has been provided two bodyguards and two house guards for her security. “But still, I feel threatened,” she says.
( With inputs from Amarnath Tewary )
