Don Quixote of Tamil Nadu must face the music

Soap operas are known to never end on Tamil television. Much the same can be said nowadays of the different kinds of drama that the state or its people have been creating, particularly in the last few months. In fact, there has never been a dull moment since Jayalalithaa was admitted to hospital last September. Adding to this Tamil pastiche of personalities and events is our judge, Justice Karnan, who has been giving different shades of performances of his maverick behaviour for some time now. The latest role he has taken on is that of a fugitive from justice, which must be the strangest role any judge has played in independent India.

All this cloak and dagger stuff may seem sensational. But whether a judge should be on the lam is a question the one evading the law must answer as his honourable colleagues on the bench cannot speak for him. Imagine the outpouring of anger when Vijay Mallya exited India with about 18 suitcases and the system pretended to be unaware that he was going away. He wasn’t simply leaving on a long holiday to watch the whole F-1 season around the world, was he? Perversely, it makes us wonder if Mallya had more right to go away abroad when he did as he was not a wanted man at that point in time.

The same cannot be said of a High Court judge who goes into hiding from the State Guest House, throwing a false scent about a holy trip to Srikalahasti. Would not a HC judge be duty-bound to obey an order of an arrest ‘forthwith’ by the top court? But then it would have been foolish to expect this of a judge who had decided to keep jousting against the windmills of his mind and all the imagined angst of oppression like Don Quixote of La Mancha. Had he been the inclined to utter ‘mea culpa’, his fellow judges may even have showed him some sympathy. Dealing with him now is no more like tackling a recalcitrant schoolboy. Soon, he will be just a citizen on the lam.

Why the police did not keep a tab on a man whose arrest was ordered by the Supreme Court is another mystery. The police are, however, known to be wary of the judiciary and when they want to be they can be terribly pedantic, like waiting for word to come to them from the top court. In the time it takes an email to land, get read and acted upon, the likes of Mallya might jet to faraway lands. It may take a judge longer to decide since the wheels of justice usually move slowly when they are in the chair and they may be somewhat predisposed to lack of speed. In the normal course, a judge’s options may have been limited to following the law. Having shown a reluctance to follow the diktat of the top court and take medical tests or appear before it, the judge’s options seemed limited to play more games with the very law he is supposed to uphold.

The Supreme Court, in its wisdom, may have even chosen to gag the media from reporting what more the renegade judge had to say. This was the most contentious part of the order, as gagging the media after allowing their colleague all the leeway to heap ridicule on the system would serve no purpose. Some outlets went ahead and gave more room for the besieged judge to vent his angst, which was a bit like the media playing the judge’s game in cocking a snook at the top court. What the renegade judge has been saying all along made it to the media which lapped up this drama, which became a comedy and which is all set to descend to farce.

It is as well that such a deep offender against the law was a judge as otherwise any ordinary contemnor would have been thrown into the dungeon long ago and the key thrown away. As a society we have become so used to playing the devil’s advocate that there is a tendency to defend anything, even the indefensible. There are stray voices rising in support of the judge who heaped ridicule on the judicial system while being very much in it.

There might be a touch of pity to see a fugitive dragged away to jail, but then how else can the top court show that it means business when ridicule has been heaped upon it? It had no option but to sentence judge Karnan and make the point that it won’t treat its colleagues in a different way. What this Don Quixote of Tamil Nadu forgot was that he is no divine messenger exempt from the laws of the land. This might be a no-win situation for the judiciary but it must nevertheless lock him up.