Justice Paul Dinakaran: Christian lawyer, Christian judge, Christian judgments

The stench from the rot in the judiciary can no longer be ignored or wished away. Justice Paul Dinakaran, formerly judge in the Madras High Court, elevated as Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court and now elevated to the Apex Court (yet to be confirmed as the Collegium has begun investigating charges of corruption levelled against him) is enveloped in the stench of his own alleged corruption and misuse of judicial powers and authority.

 

The writer has made the conscious decision to bring judges into the purview of public scrutiny, and to break the silence on corruption and other vices in the Bar and Judiciary, and to continue to shout from rooftops until such time the judiciary convincingly demonstrates that it can be trusted to make itself worthy of the sweeping powers and privileges bestowed upon it by the people of this great civilization.

 

The myth of judicial propriety and infallibility began to come visibly and audibly unstuck at the seams in February-March 2009 in the wake of violent clashes between a section of goonda lawyers and the police on February 17 and 19 inside the precincts of the Madras High Court. In the course of a series of columns on the events, the writer had observed that it was in the judiciary’s own interest to cleanse the Bar of these rowdies who, if not promptly disbarred would contaminate the pool from which future judges would be chosen, and also that if care was not taken to maintain the highest standards of quality in the product that went into the assembly line at the point of entry, the flawed product would emerge at the end of the assembly line and rise to the top.

 

Justice Paul Dinakaran exemplifies the nation’s indifference to the quality of men and women who enter our law colleges to study law, register themselves as lawyers, and if they play their political cards right, don the robes as judges of our High Courts and the Supreme Court to preside over our destinies. Not surprisingly, neither the Chief Justice of India who peremptorily ordered the transfer of senior police officers he opined were guilty of exceeding their professional limits on February 19, nor the Madras High Court, chose to deal with the scum contaminating the Tamil Nadu Bar. Insider information suggests that the Madras High Court, which is now hearing the case, has decided not to take into account Justice Srikrishna’s interim report of the clashes in which he had indicted the lawyers for breaking the law and one sitting judge for failing to deal with the growing lawlessness among one section of lawyers.

 

Judges hearing the case in the Madras High Court have also chosen not to take into account the fact that these goonda lawyers had molested visitors in Court Hall 3 on February 17, and are instead persisting in looking at the entire sequence of disgraceful events as merely a clash between the police and the lawyers. The judiciary therefore, in the considered view of the writer, deserves to be critiqued as mercilessly as politicians or bureaucrats who too enjoy sweeping powers and privileges not enjoyed by the ordinary law-abiding citizen of this country, but who like the judges of the higher courts are not protected by the antediluvian armour of ‘contempt of court’ and are ultimately accountable either directly to the people or to Parliament.

 

The writer has maintained that Christians and Muslims (with rare exceptions), no matter what positions they hold, use their positions and powers to serve their religion, while Hindus serve secularism. Justice Paul Dinakaran, Sonia Gandhi, Union Minister of State for Railways E. Ahamed, the late unlamented Samuel Rajasekhar Reddy, Farooq and other Abdullahs, Prannoy Roy, TJS George and Syed Naqvi typify the first, while Justices Venugopal, Venkatachellaiah and Markandeya Katju, Shashi Tharoor, LK Advani, Barkha Dutt and Radha Venkatesan exemplify the second. When the judiciary, democracy’s protector-of-last-resort, stoically maintains an anti-Hindu stance in the service of secularism, it is actually encouraging Christian and Muslim communalism of the worst kind.

 

In the wake of the Mandaikadu Hindu-Christian riots in Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, in March 1982, Justice Venugopal, who had been commissioned to look into the causes behind the riots, submitted the Commission Report in 1986 to the Tamil Nadu government. The riots were triggered by the unchecked and unlicensed freedom given to churches to undertake religious conversion. One of the recommendations made by Justice Venugopal in his report was to regulate the building of new places of worship in Kanyakumari. The then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, the late Shri MG Ramachandran, accepted the recommendations and the government issued an order whereby obtaining the prior permission of the district collector was mandatory to build a new place of worship – temple, church or mosque. The other recommendation that the good judge made was to rein in the RSS and its parivar organizations, besides holding them guilty of spreading disaffection and causing disharmony.

 

It has been another of this writer’s repeated observations that Indian polity believes that communal harmony and peace can be observed and maintained only when Hindus do not react to any provocation and do not pay back their tormentors in the same coin. Indian polity’s artificial edifice of communal harmony rests on Hindu social and political disempowerment.

 

As is usually the case, Hindus faithfully abided by the letter and spirit of the law, the constitution, and other pieces of legal paper which came into being after Justice Venugopal’s report, while the adherents of the two Abrahamic faiths observed them more in the breach. This has been the modus operandi of the churches in Kanyakumari, ably aided and abetted by Justice Paul Dinakaran. Churches and individual Christians, using the astronomical amounts of money pumped into this country by foreign White Churches, White Christian governments and funding agencies, buy small, medium, large properties allegedly for building a house.

 

Within a year or couple of years, sometimes within months, after Hindus and Hindu organizations have been lulled to sleep, the Christian faithful’s house becomes a Christian prayer house. Hindus and Hindu organizations wake up, look at the small prayer house with a thatched roof, comfort themselves that they can handle it, yawn and go back to sleep. When they next wake up, the prayer house has transformed itself into a full-fledged church.

 

The idiocy of Hindus knows no bounds. They continue to believe that our courts had, have, and always will render justice; and when they finally see the innocuous Christian house for what it really is – a monumental church, they climb the steps of our court-rooms sometimes whining, sometimes throwing tantrums, begging and demanding, through petitions and writ appeals, but always with faith and hope burning in their hearts, for the church to be removed. Hindus are yet to learn the skills of managing our media and our courts, while Christians and Muslims have honed and perfected their skills.

 

While Hindus file writ petitions asking the government to remove the church, Christians and churches file writs of mandamus demanding that the court issue directives to the state government and district administration not to violate their fundamental right to freedom of religion! From the ordinary Christian district revenue official, Christian lawyers and judges in the subordinate courts and High Courts, even Christian tribunal officers, they all know where their duty lies, and without any elaborate network of conspiracy, each one simply does his religious duty. Without exception, Hindus have lost all cases in the courts relating to illegal churches that are mushrooming across the state. Not surprisingly considering the Hindu judges who serve secularism and minority judges who serve their religions, Hindu petitioners have also lost all cases relating to temples too.

 

The skill of the Christians lie in the fact that they manipulated the judicial system to bring up these cases before Justice Paul Dinakaran, armed with accurate information pertaining to portfolio allocation of judges of the Madras High Court. Every single petition and writ appeal by Hindus has been dismissed and Justice Paul Dinakaran provided judicial relief to the churches in every one of these cases.

 

This was a raging scandal and only one among several other kinds of scandals involving other judges in Tamil Nadu’s courts; but because this was a scandal involving a minority religion and a minority judge, none from within the Tamil Nadu Bar dared to expose the scandal or challenge Justice Paul Dinakaran’s abuse of his judicial powers and authority to serve his religion; none except two intrepid Hindu lawyers.

 

The writer emphasizes the adjective ‘Hindu’ because these two courageous lawyers have never been guilty of seeking to downplay their Hindu identity to climb the professional ladder. One of them, to my eternal gratification, in spite of Dravidian political machinations, is today a serving judge in a High Court outside Tamil Nadu, while the other will undoubtedly become a judge in the near future powered by his knowledge of the law, his scrupulous integrity and his fearlessness.

 

The first lawyer, who is now judge, decided to challenge one such judgment by Justice Paul Dinakaran, providing relief to a church built without the prior permission of the district collector. With unassailable arguments and armed with conclusive proof, this Hindu lawyer sought to overturn the judgment delivered by Justice Dinakaran in a writ of mandamus filed by the concerned church. The infamous judgment was on the verge of being overturned when the petitioners demonstrated their skill in using the judicial system to the advantage of their religion.

 

Fearing that the overturning or setting aside of the judgment by Justice Paul Dinakaran would set the legal precedent which would similarly overturn other similar judgments, the Church withdrew its writ of mandamus in this case; this was only a tactical retreat because the issue of illegal churches would come up again before Justice Dinakaran through a different route. But the question remains, why did the First Bench of the Madras High Court allow the church to withdraw its writ of mandamus fearing an adverse judgment? If memory serves me right, the First Bench then was presided over by a gentleman suffering from a chronic case of foot-in-mouth disease.

 

A writ of mandamus comes up for hearing before a single judge and for as long as Justice Paul Dinakaran presided in the courts as a single judge, the churches preferred writs of mandamus in the courts and manipulated them to come up before Justice Paul Dinakaran for hearing. But Justice Paul Dinakaran’s star was rising rapidly with political connivance and soon he had attained enough seniority to preside over a division bench. Now churches seeking legal cover for their illegal existence and who wanted only Justice Paul Dinakaran to decide their cases, smartly changed track and their writs of mandamus became Public Interest Litigations. PILs always come up for hearing before a division bench. Illegal churches managed to bring up their cases for hearing before Justice Paul Dinakaran, always citing as legal precedent, his previous judgments granting relief to similar illegal churches.

 

One such illegal church filed a Public Interest Litigation which came for hearing before a  division bench headed by Justice Paul Dinakaran in the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court. The second Hindu lawyer cited earlier, outraged over the shameless and brazen manipulation of the judicial process by churches in Kanyakumari, with the connivance of Justice Paul Dinakaran, decided to file a writ challenging the orders passed by Justice Paul Dinakaran and seeking overturning of these judgments citing ‘misuse’ of judicial powers and process.

 

The case came up for hearing before Justice Ibrahim Khalifullah, who chose to pick up the wrong end of the stick and instead of applying his mind to the gravity of the issues of probity and integrity raised by the lawyer, chose to latch on to my friend’s use of the word ‘misuse’. The good judge threatened the lawyer with suo motu charges of contempt of court and dismissed the case.

 

There are innumerable cases where judgments have been rigged, where one may charitably cite ‘non-application of mind’ instead of alleging chicanery, instances of downright manipulation of judges by senior lawyers, corruption, debauchery, drunken revelry by judges and lawyers, and the criminal silence of the so-called decent lawyers who have still not mustered the courage or the dharmic will to cleanse the system.

 

In the meanwhile, churches continue to mushroom across the state and Hindu organizations believe writing letters of protest on postcards to editors and filing petitions and writ appeals in courts will halt the church and Christians in their tracks. There is no law against dreaming foolish dreams and the laws that exist, in the absence of Hindu consciousness among the keepers and enforcers of the law, will not serve Hindu interests.

 

There are unconfirmed rumours that Justice Paul Dinakaran’s woes began the day he dismissed cases against a former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu; but to Hindus, it does not matter if the guilty person who gets away for physically abusing a woman is charged and punished for killing a deer. Hindus know that the wheel of dharma turns in its own time and in its own way.

 

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Tail piece: It is even meaningless to ask if the anti-Hindu atheist Dravidian government will actively encourage alienation of temple properties or ask churches and wakf boards to give them land for government buildings.

 

Sought-after: The vacant land at Dhandeeswaram Nagar 7th Main Road, Velachery, belonging to Dhandeeswaram Temple, which the Postal Department proposes to purchase.

 

CHENNAI: The Hindu Religious & Charitable Endowment (HR and CE) Board has received requests from different Central and State government departments for allotment of vacant lands belonging to temples in the city.

 

Proposals

According to officials on the Board, a total of six proposals have been received from government departments seeking vacant lands belonging to different temples in the city for construction of a police station, post offices and an electricity sub-station.

 

Police station

The Police Department has requested land measuring around 32,000 sq. ft. belonging to Somanatha Swamy Temple at Kolathur for construction of a police station.

 

Likewise, the Postal Department has asked the Board for constructing post offices in Aminjikarai and Velachery in vacant lands belonging to Varadaraja Perumal Temple and Dhandeeswarar Temple.

 

A proposal has been sent by the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) seeking allotment of five acres of land for construction of a sub-station in a vacant land at Thiruverkadu. The vacant land belongs to the Vedapureeswarar Temple.

 

Also the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board has requested for 3,600 square feet of land belonging to Kapaleeswarar Temple, Mylapore.

 

Likewise, a vacant land belonging to Venkatesa Perumal Temple at Sowcarpet has been requested by SIDCO.

 

Public notice

An official of the Board said that the requests from the various government departments are being studied, after which a public notice will be issued calling for objections from the people.

 

Fixing land value

The next procedure would be fixing the value of the land, which would be 1.5 times the guideline value prevailing in the area, he added. Once the value of the land has been fixed, the proposal would be forwarded to the State Government for approval.

 

Post office

Confirming that a request has been sent to the HR and CE Board seeking a vacant land at Velachery, a Postal Department official said that at present the post office at Velachery is in a rented building and suffered from space constraints. We have requested around 3,000 sq. ft. of land, so that a post office would be constructed to ease inconvenience for the residents of the area, he added.

 

A letter has been submitted to the HR and CE Board requesting for allotting six cents of the vacant plot located at Dhandeeswaram Nagar 7th Main Road.  

 

Online edition of India’s National Newspaper, Thursday, Sep 10, 2009.

Drive on to recover temple property  

V.S. Palaniappan  

Coimbatore: The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Department has started a drive in the Coimbatore zone to recover temple property including buildings, shops, houses and lands that have been encroached upon.  

HR&CE Joint Commissioner P.R. Ashok told The Hindu that 25 cases under Section 78 of HR&CE Act had been disposed of and measures are on to evict 25 encroachers from about 94.4 acres. These were worth about Rs. 6.42 crore. Revenue loss on account of unpaid rent and unfair rentals fixed for temple property had been detected. Mr. Ashok said 757 such cases had been identified: 517 of them were buildings and 240 vacant sites.  

 

He said fair rent had now been fixed for these premises; this would fetch about Rs. 80 lakh each month for temples. The department had identified 7.32 acres belonging to five temples encroached upon by multiple individuals. For these, the fair rent fixed now would fetch Rs. 75 lakh a year.  

 

Mr. Ashok said scrutiny of Inam Settlement Land Register in respect of the Nilgiris, Coimbatore, Tirupur and Erode districts had led to the compilation of five volumes of documents identifying 22,000 acres. Of these, 13,750 acres had been located. Efforts are on to take possession of them. He said that executive officers of 275 temples had preferred patta transfer appeals before District Revenue Officers in respect of 1,800 acres. More than 1,600 acres for which pattas existed in the name of temples and which were usurped had been identified: steps were on to take possession of them.  

 

Mr. Ashok said that a scrutiny of the Updated Register (UDR) had showed instances of temple lands being given pattas in the name of third parties by mistake, and efforts were on to recover these. During the current year alone, temple renovation and maintenance works are being taken up in Coimbatore, Erode, Tirupur and the Nilgiris districts at an outlay of Rs 1,518.38 lakh.

 

The author is Editor, www.vigilonline.com

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