Former judge of the Mumbai High Court Abhay Thipsay has defended his role in giving a legal opinion in the Nirav Modi case as a witness before a UK court and feels that Law Minister Ravishankar Prasad has targeted him apparently because he refused to “compromise” despite pressure and persuasions from different quarters in some sensitive cases.
Speaking to The Pioneer on phone, Justice (retd) Thipsay explained that the entire controversy has two parts. First, to do with his legal opinion in the extant case; the other one with his past judgments.
“Let me first deal with the first part,” he said. “I simply gave a legal opinion as a witness. I was not defending Nirav Modi or anyone. Some people are trying to project this as a case of my collusion with an anti-national. This is not done.”
Justice (retd) Thipsay, who is elder brother of former national chess champion and Grandmaster Pravin Thipsay, said that in his legal opinion as a witness he merely explained that under the Indian law no offence has been defined as a “financial fraud” and as such the Nirav Modi case is being treated as a case of cheating. “I explained that since the bank officials were themselves involved in issuing the Letter of Undertakings, how the bank can pretend to be a victim?”
“Under the Indian law, for cheating there has to be a conspirator and a victim — a deceiver and a deceived. The person who has been deceived can initiate legal action against the deceiver. But the bank is not an individual with its own mind. It’s represented by certain officials and there action alone can come under legal scrutiny. The bank as an entity cannot pretend to be a victim under the definition of law.”
“But were not shareholders and depositors ended up becoming victims of the financial fraud?”
“As I said before in the India law, there is nothing defined as financial fraud. So we’ve to see this under the law of cheating. If the depositors and shareholders had filed complaints and the case was based on it, it would have been a different situation. That was not the case before me. Here PNB has been presented as a victim.”
“The Law Minister has accused that you were acting at the behest of the Congress party, which you joined in 2018, as part of a bigger game plan to bail out Nirav Modi.”
“Well, let me make it very clear that my opinions have nothing to do with the Congress. Don’t people in my position in other parties discharge their professional duty independent of the party’s views or position? My opinion is not a secret document. I gave it to the Government of India long back, and they replied to that also. I don’t know, why they are suddenly upset,” he said.
Thipsay went on to remind Ravishankar Prasad that before Nirav Modi fled India, and even after the IT conducted raid on him, former Law Minister Arun Jailey’s daughter was his advocate.
“I’ve nothing against her or Jaitely. She was doing a professional job. Just like I’m doing my job. I can name dozens of advocates with political associations who appeared in several sensitive cases and defended highly controversial accused persons. It’s the job of an advocate to do this. I’ve merely appeared as witness to expound on a law point. Why make such a hue and cry over it?”
On asked why such hostile reaction from the Law Minister, Justice Thipsay said, “All I can say that some people nurture grudge against me since I was all along an uncompromising judge. I know some of my judgment, especially in the infamous Best Bakery case, made some people very unhappy. But I’ve always been true to my conscience.”
“Was there any pressure on you in the Best Bakery case to acquit the accused persons?”
“See this was a very controversial case. It was transferred out of Gujarat by the Supreme Court. The nation’s eyes were on this case and the Gujarat Government was obviously extremely concerned about its outcome. I was honoured to be nominated as judge to deal with the case. There were both pressure and persuasions from different quarters - including floods of threatening letter and pleas that as a Hindu I should side with the accused persons --- but I did what a judge should have done. Of course, my judgment had upset some people and they found difficult to forget it. That’s why they treat me as an enemy.”
Justice Thipsay pointed out that during thirty years of his judicial career mostly the Congress was in power both at the Centre and in the State, so majority of his judgments went against the executive decision of the Government.
“In fact, I was accused to be pro-BJP for several of my judgments including quashing a defamation case against Nitin Gadkari when he was Leader of the Opposition in Maharashtra Assembly and giving bails to two accused of the Malegaon blast case.
“My judgments were based on principled enshrined in the Constitution. But today, everything is being viewed from the prison of communalism, and social media trolls are let loose against judges who differ with the Government. This is a very sad situation -- and it poses serious danger to our democracy,” he said.
