Odd as it may seem, I sometimes wonder if our judges are their own worst enemies. At times, they can say the strangest things — almost as if they got carried away. Do they not worry about its implications? Are they not concerned about its impact? Let me illustrate my point by referring to Justice Surya Kant’s and Justice Kotiswar Singh’s handling of the Ali Khan Mahmudabad case.

First, they accused Mahmudabad of “dog-whistling” and using words with double meanings. They said his “choice of words is deliberately made to insult, humiliate or cause some kind of discomfort to others”. But they didn’t say what words they were referring to? Instead, they went on “he could convey these very feelings in a very simple language … use terminology, which is simple, respectful and very neutral”. But, again, they didn’t identify what they were alluding to.

This prompted the scholar Gautam Bhatia to point out that a dog-whistle is usually at a frequency inaudible to human ears. So, what part of Mahmudabad’s Facebook posts were........

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