Commercial misuse of court remarks: Supreme Court seeks Government reply on plea for CBI probe

The plea by advocate Raja Choudhary also urged the court to direct probe into allegations concerning fake advocates, fraudulent law degrees, impersonation within legal practice, and deterioration of professional standards in the legal profession.

The petitioner referred to the top court’s proceedings on May 15 during which the CJI had made the “cockroaches” remark. Later, the CJI had told The Indian Express, “It was about the lawyers who have entered the profession through backdoor based on mostly fake degrees. Issue was about fake law degrees and how to clean up. It was in that context that I commented.”

At that hearing, the plea said, “Concerns were expressed regarding procedural misuse of courts, conferment of Senior Advocate designation, deterioration of professional standards and repeated procedural insistence within judicial process. During the course of spontaneous courtroom interaction, certain metaphorical (cockroach) expressions were used in the context of institutional frustration and procedural anxiety. However, isolated fragments of oral proceedings were thereafter selectively clipped, meme-ified, mimicked, commercially circulated, and transformed into viral digital content detached from constitutional and procedural context.”

Choudhary contended that “metaphorical references involving animals, insects, vermin, creatures, or symbolic imagery have historically existed within literature, jurisprudence, constitutional discourse, political theory and legal philosophy as recognised tools for expressing institutional anxiety, bureaucratic alienation, procedural disorder, collapse of communication between individuals and authority systems, and symbolic commentary upon social behaviour.”

Invoking Franz Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’, the petitioner argued that the author “used vermin imagery not literally, but symbolically to describe alienation, bureaucratic violence, and institutional absurdity. Contemporary scholarship further recognises that animal metaphors are universal cognitive devices embedded within human communication and institutional discourse.”

The plea said that “similarly, Indian constitutional discourse and judicial traditions have historically used symbolic metaphors such as ‘Jungle Raj’, ‘watchdog’, ‘marketplace of ideas’, ‘fraud on the Constitution’, and ‘guinea pig’ while describing governance failures, constitutional anxieties, institutional accountability, and procedural realities. Such expressions have never been interpreted through fragmented literalism but through constitutional context and jurisprudential understanding.”

The petitioner argued that what happened subsequently, “including activities associated with the ‘Cockroach Janta Party’ alleged trademark-commercial assertions, branding campaigns, and monetised digital circulation, prima facie demonstrate organised commercial appropriation of judicial controversy and oral courtroom interaction.”