Is India Becoming a Country Where It Is Dangerous for Judges to Deliver Justice? Justice Markandey Katju on Judge Tabassum Khan and the Narmadapuram Lynching Verdict
Justice Markandey Katju: Why Judge Tabassum Khan's Lynching Verdict Triggered Threats and Hate Campaigns
- Mob Lynching Verdict, Death Threats and Judicial Independence: Justice Katju's Warning for India
- Can Judges Deliver Justice Without Fear? Justice Markandey Katju on the Tabassum Khan Controversy
- Judge Tabassum Khan, Mob Lynching Verdict and the Crisis of Judicial Independence in India
Summary
This analysis by retired Supreme Court judge Justice Markandey Katju examines the backlash against Judge Tabassum Khan after her conviction of the accused in the 2022 Narmadapuram mob lynching case. The article explores judicial independence, communalization of court verdicts, the constitutional role of judges, mob lynching, vigilante violence, and the broader implications for democracy and the rule of law in India.
A country where it is dangerous to do justice
By Justice Markandey Katju
Has India become a country where it is dangerous for a judge, particularly if he/she is a Muslim, to do justice?
An Additional District and Sessions Judge of Narmadapuram, Madhya Pradesh, Tabassum Khan, convicted and sentenced several men to life imprisonment in a 2022 mob lynching case.
The facts of the case were that a truck left Madhya Pradesh on the night of 2nd August 2022 carrying cattle and three men from Amravati in Maharashtra. Near Barakhad village, in the Seoni Malwa police area, a crowd stopped it. The crowd, allegedly 'gau rakshaks', beat the three men with sticks and staves. Nazir Ahmed, a man of about fifty, did not survive. The other two lived to tell the court what happened.
Four years later, the judge, Tabassum Khan, considered the evidence, heard the lawyers for the prosecution and the accused, and on 12th June 2026, convicted several of the accused. She held that they had formed an unlawful assembly, armed themselves with deadly weapons, and killed Nazir Ahmed with extreme brutality. She called it mob lynching and sentenced them to life imprisonment.
For doing so, she has been targeted with severe online abuse and death threats. Videos appeared, in one of which a man called the judge by a slur reserved for Muslim women. He warned of bloodshed across the state and the country if the convicts were not freed within ten days. A man from Surat repeated the threat. An effigy of the judge was set alight. A television editor called the verdict a judicial lynching and stood with the families of the convicted. Online accounts demanded her suspension and asked that every judgment she had ever delivered be reopened.
The judge had only done her duty. On the basis of the evidence, she convicted the men who killed an innocent traveller on a dark road. For this, she is hunted by mobs and slurred in public.
Almost immediately after the verdict, the focus of public discourse shifted away from the evidence, the findings of the court and the legal reasoning contained in the judgment. Instead, the controversy was deliberately reframed around the religious identity of the judge. Rather than questioning the correctness of the verdict through legal argument or by filing an appeal against it in the High Court, sections of the cow vigilante movement, Hindutva organisations, and right-wing commentators portrayed the decision as the product of the judge’s Muslim identity. The result has been the communalization of an ordinary criminal trial and the verdict.
Criminal courts are expected to determine guilt or innocence on the basis of evidence placed before them. The personal religion, caste or background of a judge has no legal relevance to the adjudicatory process. Yet, rather than engaging with the court’s findings regarding unlawful assembly, common object, eyewitness testimony, forensic evidence and the brutality of the assault, attention rapidly shifted towards Judge Khan herself. In effect, the messenger of justice became more important than the message.
What initially appeared to be local dissatisfaction soon developed into a coordinated campaign extending beyond the district in which the trial had taken place. Reports in a section of the media indicated that several self-described cow protection organisations and Hindutva groups organised protests condemning the verdict, not primarily on legal grounds but by questioning the religious identity and impartiality of the judge.
Among the most visible organisations participating in these protests was the Gau Raksha Parishad. Demonstrations were organised in which effigies of Judge Tabassum Khan were publicly burnt while slogans branding her “anti-Hindu” were raised. Rather than calling for appellate review of the judgment, the demonstrations sought to portray the conviction itself as an act of religious discrimination against Hindus. The symbolism of burning a judge’s effigy represented a significant escalation from criticism of a judicial decision to the personal targeting of a serving judicial officer.
The demonstrations did not remain confined to Madhya Pradesh. On June 22, members of Gau Raksha Parishad organised a ‘protest’ in Peer Muchalla in Mohali, Punjab, where demonstrators burned an effigy of Judge Khan while shouting slogans demanding the release of the convicted men. Similar protests were subsequently reported from Uttar Pradesh, where members of the Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad-Rashtriya Bajrang Dal staged demonstrations against the judgment inside government premises. Authorities in that state allowed these to remain unchecked. The geographical spread of these ‘protests’ suggested that the issue had acquired national dimensions, fuelled largely through coordinated organisational and social media mobilisation rather than any fresh legal developments in the case. Significantly, they signified powerful political patronage behind the acts.
Equally revealing was the language adopted by many protesters. Instead of describing the judgment as legally incorrect or identifying alleged errors in the appreciation of evidence, the demonstrations repeatedly referred to Judge Khan’s religion. Her Muslim identity became the principal basis upon which the legitimacy of the judgment was questioned. This represented a dangerous inversion of justice. Judicial decisions are meant to be evaluated through legal reasoning, not through the religious identity of the individual delivering them.
The campaign rapidly migrated from public demonstrations to social media, where it assumed an even more disturbing form. An extensive online campaign filled with communal abuse, personal attacks and threats directed specifically at Judge Khan.
Numerous social media posts reportedly described her as “anti-Hindu” and questioned her ability to dispense impartial justice because she was Muslim. Others employed openly derogatory communal slurs directed at Muslim women. These posts did not merely criticise the verdict; they sought to delegitimise Judge Khan’s authority as a judicial officer by reducing her identity to her religion.
Several videos circulated widely across social media platforms, amplifying these narratives before large audiences. One of the most disturbing videos reportedly featured an individual using deeply offensive communal language while referring to the judge and warning that there would be a “bloodbath” if the convicted men were not released within ten days. The individual threatened violence extending beyond Madhya Pradesh and attempted to portray the judicial verdict as justification for communal mobilisation.
At a time when incidents of violence by 'gau rakshaks' linked to allegations of cattle transportation and cow smuggling continue to generate legal and constitutional concerns, the ruling sends a clear message that vigilante groups cannot substitute themselves for law enforcement and that collective violence resulting in death will attract the gravest criminal consequences under the law.
No doubt the M.P. High Court has directed police protection for the judge concerned. But the point remains, what kind of a society have we become when a judge cannot do his/her duty? And what kind of a society have we become where criminals who lynch members of the minority community are not supposed to be punished, particularly by a Muslim judge, but are expected to be let off with impunity ?
All right-minded Indians must support Judge Tabassum Khan. Hats off to her for bravely doing her duty!
(Justice Katju is a retired Supreme Court judge and former Chairman of the Press Council of India. These are his personal views.)
FAQ
Why is Judge Tabassum Khan in the news?
Judge Tabassum Khan, an Additional District and Sessions Judge in Madhya Pradesh, sentenced several men to life imprisonment in the 2022 Narmadapuram mob lynching case. Following the verdict, she allegedly faced online abuse, communal attacks and death threats. In this opinion article, Justice Markandey Katju argues that the targeting of a judge for delivering a judicial verdict raises serious concerns about judicial independence, constitutional values and the rule of law in India.
