The top court of India’s Maharashtra state has, for an eighth time, refused to hear a plea seeking to clear the late Jesuit Father Stan Swamy from an anti-terror case that includes a plot to kill Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Source: UCA News.
Justice Revati Mohite-Dere of the Bombay High Court recused herself from hearing the plea on September 20 that wanted to remove Fr Swamy’s name from the seven-year-old case filed against 16 leading activists in the country.
The legal term recuse means that a person is unqualified to perform legal duties because of a potential conflict of interest or lack of impartiality. The judges have rescued themselves from hearing the case on seven earlier occasions.
However, a lawyer following the case said these judges had not explicitly expressed their potential conflict of interest in the case.
The petitioner, Jesuit Father Frazer Mascarenhas, said, “This was the eighth bench in the high court refusing to hear the case.
No bench in the high court is willing to hear the case “because it is clearly in our favour,” said Fr Mascarenhas, whom the Jesuits appointed as a delegate to file the case in December 2021, after Fr Swamy’s custodial death on July 5, 2021.
The judges fear “retribution from the government”, Fr Mascarenhas said yesterday.
The 84-year-old Fr Swamy was arrested on October 8, 2020, at his residence in Ranchi, in eastern Jharkhand state.
He was accused of offences such as sedition, having links with an outlawed Maoist group, and being part of a conspiracy to kill Mr Modi.
“We still do not know why eight benches refused to hear this case. It is a clear case of justice being denied to Fr Swamy,” Fr Mascarenhas said.
Rights activists say Fr Swamy was arrested because he opposed the land policies of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in his state and marshalled tribal people to oppose them.
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Indian court again refuses to hear Stan Swamy case (UCA News)
