Growing demand for Supreme Court to take cognisance of ‘bulldozer injustice’

The Chattarpur district collector has come up with yet another justification for demolishing the bungalow of Haji Shehzad Ali and his brothers on Thursday, 22 August. Explaining why the construction was deemed to be illegal, he told the media that a notice had been ‘issued’ 15 days ago (not served) but the municipality had received no response. Moreover, the house was built within 200 meters of a waterbody, he added in defence of the administration, which is facing mounting public outrage.

Shehzad Ali denies having been served any notice. "We were never served any notice (the municipality is required to prove that the notice was properly served and received) and the under-construction house was not near a waterbody; it is actually in the middle of a locality and a lake is approximately 1.5 kilometres away. There is an entire locality along the lake and the house I built was on the other end of this locality.”

He reiterated his claim that the demolition was simply a knee-jerk reaction to the gherao of the police station and stone-pelting on Wednesday. “I had nothing to do with it either and was actually standing with the Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) and yet my house was targeted," he rued. He had made frantic telephone calls to senior officials after being tipped off about the impending action, to prevent the demolition but was asked to wait.
Recalling the developments on Wednesday, when a delegation of Muslims had gone to the police station to lodge an FIR against the derogatory remarks made against the Prophet by a ‘baba’ in Maharashtra.

"Discussions were underway and police said they would first investigate the matter before registering an FIR, while the Muslim side demanded that a case be registered first for hurting religious sentiments. This created some tension between the elderly members of the community and the police and some young men got agitated and pelted stones at the police station which led to a lathi charge and dispersal of the crowd," he elaborated, reiterating that he was not involved in the vandalism.

Meanwhile, there is a growing clamour for the Supreme Court to suo motu take cognisance of rising cases of ‘bulldozer justice’. Lawyer, writer and constitutional law expert Gautam Bhatia posted on X, “I wonder why the Supreme Court hasn’t taken suo motu cognisance of “bulldozer justice”, now into its third year. Is it because the court thinks it’s powerless to stop it? Or, more disturbingly, does it agree with the State that destroying people’s homes on allegations of law-breaking is fine? Or - even more disturbingly - is it because the victims of “bulldozer justice” are politically powerless, and the court sees no value in taking up their cause? Or is it a combination of all three things?”

Senior advocate at the Supreme Court Sanjay Hegde reacted by saying, “If a chief minister can instruct the administration to bring your house down, it is the rule of law that has been bulldozed. There is no justice called "bulldozer justice". If Justices get bulldozed even the basic structure will not stand.” 

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge also posted on X, “Demolishing someone's home and rendering their family homeless is both inhumane and unjust. The repeated targeting of minorities in BJP-ruled states is deeply troubling. Such actions have no place in a society governed by the rule of law. The Congress party strongly condemns the BJP state governments for their blatant disregard of the Constitution, using bulldozing as a tactic to instil fear among citizens. Anarchy cannot replace natural justice—offences must be adjudicated in courts, not through state-sponsored coercion.”

Lawyer and activist Anas Tanwir pointed out, “The last effective Supreme Court hearing on bulldozer injustice was in April 2022, with no progress since October 2023. These actions have no legal basis and are nothing short of lawlessness. The buck undoubtedly stops at SC.”

In a rare move, six former judges and six lawyers wrote a letter to the Chief Justice of India in 2022 saying the use of bulldozers was "an unacceptable subversion of the rule of law" and urging the court to act against the "violence and repression against Muslim citizens".

Besides former Supreme Court judges B Sudarshan Reddy, V Gopala Gowda and A.K. Ganguly, the letter was signed by three former High Court judges and six lawyers. Signatories also included Justice AP Shah, former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court and former chairperson of the Law Commission of India; Justice K Chandru, who served the Madras High Court, and Justice Mohammed Anwar, who served the Karnataka High Court. The six senior lawyers among the signatories were former law minister Shanti Bhushan, Prashant Bhushan, Indira Jaising, Chander Uday Singh, Sriram Panchu and Anand Grover.