Greeva Garg–
Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana mediated in his mother tongue, Telugu while hearing a matter, for reuniting a couple after 21 years of separation.
CJI chose to deviate from the customary norms and interacted with the couple in Telugu for their better counseling to settle down the matter.
The official language of the Supreme Court is English, and interaction in regional language between the bench and a litigant has never been witnessed before.
The Bench comprising of Chief Justice Ramana and Justice Surya Kant make an effort to ensure that language barrier do not come in the way of access to justice in a country known for its linguistic diversity.
The Bench observed that “Recent times have seen the Supreme Court translate its judgments from English to various regional languages. The objective is to help litigants and the public to read the verdicts themselves and fully understand the law.”
The matter concerned a harassment complaint filed by a woman on her husband under Section 498A of the Indian Penal code (IPC) in 2001.
The Trial Court convicted the man and sentenced him to 1 year of imprisonment and a fine of Rs. 1,000.
The woman approached the Supreme Court against the High Court’s order for reducing the man’s sentence in an appeal in the High Court.
The Court referred the case for mediation in Hyderabad in 2012, but the efforts for settling had failed.
“The case would be amicably resolved, thanks to the initiative of the Bench. The Court advised the woman that it could very well enhance the prison sentence of her husband, but he may, as a consequence, lose his job and may not be in a financial position to provide for her and their children. The marriage was still subsisting and he has been supporting the family for 18 years now,” advocate D. Ramakrishna Reddy, the husband’s lawyer, narrated the gist of the conversation in Telugu in Court.
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