Justice Indu Malhotra bids farewell to SC with tears

Justice Indu Malhotra bids farewell to SC with tears

I Do Not Know Of A Finer Judge Than Justice Malhotra: CJI

Dhananjay Mahapatra & Amit Anand Choudhary TNN

New Delhi:13.03.2021 

The mezzo-soprano voice of Justice Indu Malhotra, the first woman advocate to be directly appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court, choked with emotion as she tried to fight off tears on the eve of her retirement on Friday after being showered with unadulterated love, affection and respect by the bar, led by the attorney general, and bench led by the CJI.

Her voice, best described as counterpart of a male baritone, coupled with her meticulous reading of case files and legal articulation had drawn the attention of judges for 35 years before she became the eighth woman SC Judge on April 27, 2018. “My tenure (as an SC judge) may be short but I am leaving with a great sense of satisfaction having been able to contribute to the best of my ability,” she said.

The fulsome praise from advocates’ associations and CJI S A Bobde, who said “I do not know of a finer judge than Justice Malhotra”, melted the hard exterior of the judge, who bid farewell to both the bench and the bar on the last day of her sitting as a judge in the SC. She retires on Saturday. A HC judge can practise in SC after retirement. But a retired SC judge cannot practise. She was the second woman advocate to be designated ‘senior’ by the SC in 2007.

At the farewell function of the SC Bar Association (SCBA), Justice Malhotra fondly recalled her contribution in the SC’s five-judge bench penning the Navtej Singh Johar case to decriminalise Section 377 and permit consensual sexual relationship in private among members of the LGBTQ community. “I was overwhelmed with emotions when I saw the joy and happiness among the members of the community,” she said.

Being just the eighth woman judge in the last 71 years of SC, Justice Malhotra said she did not believe in symbolic parity for women in judiciary. “There will be more women judges if more and more women join the bar and society will be benefited if more women participate in the justice delivery system,” she said.

The AG highlighted Justice Malhotra’s lone dissent in a Constitution bench judgment that permitted entry of women of all ages into the Sabarimala temple in Kerala, which traditionally barred entry of women in the age group of 10-50 years. Praising her for propounding ‘constitutional morality’ in her judgement, Venugopal said, “She showed commendable integrity, especially as a woman judge, by holding that women in 10-50 year age group should not be permitted to enter the temple because if permitted, the religious faith of the entire community would be violated.”

RAISING THE BAR: Justice Indu Malhotra was the first woman advocate to be directly appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court