Supreme Court chief justice shoe incident: 5 times judges came under attack
Supreme court chief justice shoe attack: While the incident involving Chief Justice BR Gavai goes to show the tenacity of the attacking lawyer, there have been several instances in past where judges have faced physical or verbal assault — inside or outside the courtroom.
Shoe thrown at Chief Justice BR Gavai: A shoe was allegedly hurled at Chief Justice of India BR Gavai by a 71-year-old lawyer on October 7, prompting widespread condemnation not only from the members of the legal sphere but netas cutting across party lines.
In his first reaction to the incident after the lawyer, identified as Rakesh Kishore, allegedly hurled a shoe toward him inside his courtroom, Gavai told The Indian Express that he asked the lawyer arguing before him to “just ignore it”.
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“I am not distracted by all this. You also don’t be distracted and proceed further with the case,” he said Monday afternoon, recounting his immediate response to the incident that took place during mentioning hours in Court No. 1.
This, however, is not the first time a judge came under attack — inside or outside the courtroom.
Here’s a list of such attacks/threats on judges:
September: A sitting judge in Madhya Pradesh’s Rewa district received a Rs 500 crore ransom note, threatening him to pay up if he wanted to “stay alive”, police said. Police said the threat letter, sent through Speed Post from Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh, landed in the court of a Civil Judge in Rewa. The latter was learnt to have been sent allegedly by a 74-year-old retired schoolteacher in an effort to frame a relative.
April: A retired government school teacher, along with his lawyer, recently threatened and hurled abuses at a woman judge inside a courtroom in Delhi after he was convicted in a six-year-old cheque bounce case. “Tu hai kya cheez… tu bahar mil, dekhte hai kaise zinda ghar jaati hai (You are nothing…come outside, we’ll see how return home alive),” the retired teacher told Judge Shivangi Mangla on April 2, as per the order passed by her — the Judicial Magistrate First Class (Negotiable Instruments Act) of Dwarka court — the same day.
July 2022: Additional Sessions Judge Uttam Anand was killed after an autorickshaw ploughed straight into him on an empty road in Dhanbad, Jharkhand in July 2022. The convicts in the case were sentenced to death.
October 2015: A lawyer alleged made “sexually explicit remarks” against a woman Delhi judge. She accused the lawyer of using “filthy and abusive language” during proceedings in a case and police have registered an FIR against him on her complaint. The incident took place when the advocate appeared before the magistrate in connection with a vehicle impound case in a drink-driving matter and moved a plea to release it, said sources.
March, 2009: A couple of decades ago, a litigant hurled a slipper at former top court judge Arijit Pasayat and was joined by four others in an offensive diatribe against the bench before whom their matter was being heard.
While instances involving a sitting top court judges remain relatively rare, records indicate a rise in physical or verbal attack on district judges, posing a serious threat to the independence and integrity of the judiciary.
