The esteemed Chief Justice of India aimed his remarks at the lawyer of journalist Siddique Kappan, in jail since October 5 for the terrible crime of trying to get to Hathras in UP to report on a rape case.

The “unfair reporting” did not come from Kappan, who hadn’t even been allowed to meet his lawyer. The Supreme Court though was sad that “unfair” reports had claimed that Kappan had been “denied relief”. Having said all that, the Supreme Court of India recorded that the UP Government had no objection to Kappan meeting his lawyer. And Kappan’s jolly holiday in jail continued as the hearing was deferred until next week. 

Unfair or what, eh? How can anyone say that Kappan has been “denied relief”? His matter has been heard by the Supreme Court of India. He actually might meet a lawyer. And he’s an honoured guest of the state.

By the end of 2019, according to the National Crime Records Bureau, 7 out of 10 people in jail were undertrials. More than 37 per cent of these undertrials spend between three months to a year in jail without being convicted. Most of these undertrials are from Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward Caste communities and one in five are Muslim. There are only 14 other countries in the world which have worse records than India when it comes to undertrials in custody.

But one must not be unfair to the Supreme Court of India because the lordships get really upset.

In Kappan’s case, we can see how expeditious they have been. Arrested on October 5, 2020 and being heard in the Supreme Court with hearings deferred twice by November. By normal Indian records, that’s faster than the speed of light if such a thing was possible.

I am sorely tempted to compare our grand version of justice to what we’re seeing in the American courts over President Trump’s legal challenges to his electoral loss. Court after court has thrown out his cases or dismissed them in days. Days! But I’m not going to make this ungenerous comparison to the justice system in another nation.