The Supreme Court on Thursday strongly disapproved of the midnight police crackdown on yoga guru Ramdev’s “sleeping” supporters at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan in June 2011 when he was on a hungerstrike against corruption.
The court said the government action was done in “undue haste” and was “overzealous”, but it also criticised Ramdev for “negligence” in abiding by the law.
The Delhi police commissioner was directed to register criminal cases against personnel found using “excessive force” like brickbatting, lathicharge and teargassing of a peaceful crowd.
“The orders were passed in undue haste and executed with force and overzealousness... The decision to forcibly evict innocent (people) sleeping at the Ramlila Grounds on the midnight of June 4-5, 2011, whether taken by the police independently or in consultation with the home ministry, is amiss and suffers from the element of arbitrariness and abuse of power... The restriction imposed on the right to freedom of speech and expression was unsupported by cogent reasons and material facts,” ruled a bench of Justices B.S. Chauhan and Swatantar Kumar, which had taken “suo motu” cognisance of the event.
The court exonerated home minister P. Chidambaram of direct involvement in ordering the swoop. But Justice Kumar, writing the main verdict, said the “shadow” of the home ministry’s involvement could not be “dispelled”.
Justice Chauhan, in a separate, concurring verdict on the right of peaceful agitation under Section 144 CrPC, said the provision was for maintaining peace, not “disturbing” it, but the police actually used it for “disturbing peace” by invoking it at midnight on “sleeping people”.
Justice Chauhan also went a step further, declaring that “peaceful sleep” was also a fundamental right like having food and water, necessary for the existence of a human being.