Supreme Court invites former SC judge Markandey Katju to a rare debate

New Delhi: In an unprecedented move, the Supreme Court on Monday took suo motu cognisance of a blog of former apex court judge Markandey Katju criticising the verdict in Soumya murder case and asked him to come in person to the court for a debate as to who is right in law — whether Justice Katju or the Supreme Court?

A bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi, P.C. Pant and U.U. Lalit took suo motu cognisance of the blog by Justice Katju, calling the verdict that set aside the  murder charges on the accused Govindachamy a “grave error” not expected of “judges who had been in the legal world for decades”.

The bench, hearing the review petitions filed by Sumathi, mother of Soumya and the Kerala government, observed that they had the greatest respect for Justice Katju and so wanted him to come personally and debate in the open court as to why he thought their judgement was fundamentally flawed.

Review petitions kept in abeyance
The bench in its order said that they did not consider it “appropriate” to pass any decision on the review petitions at this stage as they will be kept in abeyance and decided after deciding the issues raised by Justice Katju in his blog.

The bench asked him to come for the debate on November 11. In his September 17 blog, Justice Katju had said, “From the evidence  on record it appears that Saumya [Soumya] had two sets of injuries on her body. Injury no. 1 were the injuries she got inside the ladies compartment in the train, and injury no. 2 were those she got by falling off the train. That even regarding injury no. 1 by itself the accused Govindachamy was guilty of murder, since he repeatedly hit Saumya’s [Soumya’s] head on the wall of the compartment, which was more than sufficient in the ordinary course to cause death. The head is a vital part of the body, and is not like a leg. So catching the hair of a woman and repeatedly hitting her head against a wall is sufficient in the ordinary course to cause death.”