New Delhi, December 17
After declaring strike by government employees illegal earlier, the Supreme Court in another important judgement has directed the Centre and the state governments to take stringent action against hooligans indulging in violence and damaging private and public properties during “bandhs, hartals and strikes”.
During hartals, bandhs or strikes no person has the right to destroy property whether owned by private persons or the government and put citizens under threat and cause inconvenience to them, said a Bench comprising Mr Justice Doraiswamy Raju and Mr Justice Arijit Pasayat in a judgement delivered yesterday.
The court acquitted Jems Martin and his father Xavier Martin from Kochi in Kerala of the murder charges, accepting their appeal against their conviction that they had fired in “self-defence” at a mob that had attacked their establishment during “Bharat bandh” on March 15, 1988, resulting in the death of a person.
“It is high time that the authorities concerned take serious note of this requirement while dealing with those who destroy public property in the name of strike, hartal or bandh,” the court said.
“The question whether bandh or hartal has any legal sanctity is of little consequence”, if the political parties and trade union organisations, who had given call for the strike failed to control their activists, it said.
The bandh call was given by some political parties and the deceased was its activist.
Exonerating the father and the son of the murder charges, stating that they had excercised their right of “self defence” available to them under the provisions of Indian Penal Code, the apex court said “unless such acts are controlled with iron hands, innocent citizens are bond to suffer and they shall continue to be the victims of the highhanded acts of some fanatics with queer notions of democracy and freedom of speech.”
Lashing out at the political parties, trade unions and other such organisations, who give call for strikes but fail to observe it democratically and control their workers, the court said as long as they were not confident of their hold on their activists, they should think twice before “hazarding themselves into such risk-prone venture, which may endanger public life.”
