‘If you have fire in your belly, can unshackle entrenched biases’: Justice Rajiv Shakdher

Justice Shakdher left a message for the less privileged, adding that judges have to net the ball as people watch them silently and evaluate them. “To the unentitled, you may be unconnected, uninitiated and untrained but if you have fire in your belly, you can unshackle the entrenched system biases of caste, creed and economics. You have to learn to march to the tune of your own drummer. The trouble only is when there are two drummers sitting on the bench, then we need a symphony,” said Justice Shakdher.

He also paid tribute to Justice H R Khanna — the sole dissenter in the landmark ADM Jabalpur case in which the Supreme Court held that citizens can be denied the right to approach a court to challenge detentions during the Emergency. “To do good, grasp it with both hands. Justice H R Khanna symbolises this phenomena. He and his kind often capture our mindspace, inspiring many who tread that path,” he added.

Justice Kait, meanwhile, reminisced about his humble roots of hailing from a village, of being a first-generation lawyer without a godfather in the profession.

Paying homage to Dr B R Ambedkar, he said, “I’m from a rural background but have been able to achieve this height because of our Constitution. For this, I pay homage to the father of the Constitution, Dr B R Ambedkar.”

He also thanked his staff, including his chauffeur, usher and personal security officer, by name.

Notably, a division bench headed by Justice Kait was due to hear the bail pleas of the accused in the larger conspiracy of the 2020 Delhi riots, including that of Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam and others, on October 7.

Listing down the contributions of Justice Kait during his tenure at the Delhi HC — his parent HC — Acting Chief Justice Manmohan said he is a decisive and relief-oriented judge with a straightforward approach and his performance has always been admired by the Bar and the Bench.

In Nabi Alam vs State (GNCTD), ACJ Manmohan pointed out, Justice Kait had interpreted Section 50 of the NDPS Act 1985 “as regards the right of an accused to get a search conducted in the presence of the magistrate and in doing so he adopted a fine balance between constitutional safeguards of the accused and the right of the agency to investigate fairly”.

“… Justice Kait enriched jurisprudence in bail matters and other areas concerning constitutional protections by his pronouncements. In a recent pronouncement on the reduction of sentence of a convict, a bench headed by Justice Kait adopted a reformative approach and balanced principles of sentencing by upholding the concept of reformation in criminal law,” the ACJ said.