Title: A Controversial Judge

Author: Ayaskanta Das & Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

Publisher: Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

Year of publication: 2025

Before we get into this thought-provoking book, two things need to be said about it.

One, it reaffirms that courageous journalism and writing still breathe in India, notwithstanding the utter capitulation of much of the media to power and commerce. Two, the book raises troubling questions about our higher judiciary, based not on allegations or charges, but on facts available in the public domain and easily verifiable. The authors lay out the carcass of our judicial system, wounds and all, and leave it to the reader to make up his or her mind.

The central character is Justice Arun Mishra, appointed to the Supreme Court in July 2014 by the Narendra Modi government, even though the previous UPA government had twice rejected his case.

On his retirement from the SC in September 2020, he was appointed chairman of the NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) in June 2021, where he did not distinguish himself. For the first time ever, the NHRC was downgraded by GANHRI (Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions) from category A to B for its failure to investigate human rights violations and its police-led approach.

He retired from the NHRC in January 2025 and was, unsurprisingly and ironically, appointed ombudsman and ethics officer of the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India).

In this book, fourteen of his most controversial judgments are subjected to a forensic analysis that the media, or any legal scholar, have never had the courage to undertake.

In each case, any reasonable person would find him wanting, feeling that he was prone to riding roughshod over high court judgments, fashioning previous judgments and precedents to suit his interpretations of the law, displaying a complete lack of empathy for human rights, failing to acknowledge conflicts of interest in some cases and refusing to recuse himself from them, and intriguingly ruling in favour of the government, the rich and the powerful even when there was........

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