BHOPAL: The judiciary recently pressed the pause button on what has come to be known as 'bulldozer justice' across the country.
Unauthorised demolitions of private properties were put on hold by a Supreme Court bench till October 1 -- the day it will further hear a bunch of petitions over the executive allegedly acting as the judge, jury, and executioner against the accused in criminal cases, taking the judiciary out of the equation.
A division bench comprising justices B R Gavai and KV Viswanathan, while passing the interim order, however, clarified that the order won’t be applicable to encroachments on public roads, footpaths, railway lines, and water bodies.
When Solicitor General Tushar Mehta raised concerns about the possibility of the order impacting legally sanctioned demolitions, the bench acidly said, “Heavens won’t fall if we ask you to hold your hands till the next hearing.” The court also warned against irresponsible statements by some ministers after the judges had expressed their intention to lay down pan-India guidelines on property demolition.
“After the September 2 order, there have been statements that bulldozers will continue. After that order, there has been grandstanding and justification. Should this happen in our country? Shall the Election Commission of India (ECI) be noticed? We will formulate directives,” the judges observed during the September 17 hearing. The reference to the ECI assumed significance, as it happened ahead of the crucial assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir and Haryana.
The bench’s observations came after the petitioners said demolitions were going on in many places, despite the court having expressed concerns during the last hearing.
In his arguments during the hearing, Mehta said that a narrative was being set about a particular community being targeted. “In Madhya Pradesh... 70 shops were demolished after following due procedure and more than 50 of them belonged to Hindus. What they say mohallas, etc is just narrative building,” he claimed.
The bench assured that “outside noise” was not influencing the court. “Outside noise is not influencing us. We won’t get into the question of...which community...at this point. Even if there is one instance of illegal demolition, it is against the ethos of the Constitution.”
In its hearing on September 2, the bench asked how a house could be demolished simply because someone is accused of a crime. Even a conviction does not justify such an action without following proper legal procedure, it observed. “How can a house be demolished just because he is (an) accused? It cannot be demolished even if he is a convict... A father may have a recalcitrant son, but if the house is demolished on this ground...this is not the way to go about it,” the bench said.
The present case
A bunch of petitions were filed before the court in April 2022, against the BJP-controlled North Delhi Municipal Corporation’s order to demolish houses, shops and structures on streets where communal riots had happened in Jahangirpuri during a Hanuman Jayanti procession. The petitioners included Jamiat-Ulama-i-Hind and former member of Parliament and CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat. By the time the SC halted that demolition drive, around 20 shops and the front of a mosque were reportedly flattened.
In September 2023, during a subsequent hearing, the petitioners contended that the right to a home was part of the Right to Life under Article 21 of the Constitution.
In August last, two applications were filed by Muslim organisations before the top court seeking urgent relief against bulldozer action by authorities in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. One application related to the bulldozing of an ‘illegally built’ palatial house (reportedly worth Rs 20 crore) owned by Congress leader Haji Shahzad Ali in MP’s Chhatarpur district.
Ali, the former district vice-president of the party, was on the run at that time, after having been booked by the local police for allegedly leading a mob of Muslims to attack the Chhatarpur Kotwali police station, following protests over a Hindu religious leader’s offensive remarks about Islam and Prophet Muhammad in Nashik (Maharashtra). The bulldozers also damaged Ali’s high-end cars parked near the house.
The second application related to a case from Rajasthan’s Udaipur district, where a person’s house was demolished after his tenant’s 15-year-old son was accused of stabbing to death a classmate in the school premises in August.
Other cases
Deploying bulldozers to clear encroachments is standard practice for law enforcement. One horrible instance was their employment for slum clearance by Indira Gandhi’s son Sanjay during Emergency in 1976 in Delhi’s Turkman Gate. They also came into play for the demolition of properties in the national capital for the Commonwealth Games in 2010, which rendered about 2.5 lakh people homeless.
But using it in a targeted manner against those accused in criminal cases takes it to a completely different level. In fact, demolition justice first began in a big way in 2017 in Indore - India’s cleanest and Madhya Pradesh’s most populated city. The Yogi Adityanath-led regime replicated it in Uttar Pradesh later.
In 2017, Harinarayanchari Mishra, then Deputy Inspector General at Indore and now Bhopal police commissioner, launched a massive crackdown on properties illegally built by gangsters, goons, land sharks and narcotic mafia on public land. The year-long drive, which reportedly helped the police and local administration free up land worth hundreds of crores of rupees from the clutches of around 300 anti-social elements, included those belonging to the state police. The drive got ample support from netas across the political spectrum - both the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress. The then chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan lauded it during his Independence Day address in Bhopal that year.
While the extensive use of bulldozers to raze properties of those accused in criminal cases earned Yogi Adityanath the sobriquet of ‘Bulldozer Baba’, which possibly played a key role in his repeat mandate in 2022, Shivraj Singh Chouhan came to be called ‘Bulldozer Mama’ for doing likewise after his return to power in Madhya Pradesh in March 2020.
Six months after heading the UP government for the first time, Adityanath in September 2017 gave a stern warning to criminals operating in the state, saying they would end up losing their properties. At that point in time, UP had the dubious distinction of being a largely lawless state. By and by, bulldozer justice became part of the core action plan in the state to put the fear of law in the minds of hardened criminals.
In July 2020, the house of dreaded criminal Vikas Dubey — whose aides shot dead eight police personnel during a failed raid in a village in Kanpur Dehat district — was razed. Barely a month later, the authorities demolished two illegal buildings owned by gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari in Lucknow. The following month, authorities in Prayagraj demolished a house belonging to former member of Parliament and gangster Atiq Ahmad, as part of the drive against unauthorised properties of the then jailed gangster.
Adityanath himself stated in February 2021 that the bulldozer drive helped the revenue department free up around 67,000 acres from the land mafia during his first chief ministerial tenure. The lands so acquired were used to promote sports on a priority basis, he added.
In June 2022, the authorities in UP demolished the house of a political activist-cum-businessman Mohd Javed, reportedly after serving just a day’s notice to vacate it. Javed was an accused in a case pertaining to violence in Prayagraj district over offensive statements by BJP leader Nupur Sharma about Prophet Muhammad.
In neighbouring Madhya Pradesh, it was during the 15-month-old Congress regime led by Kamal Nath (December 2018 to March 2020) that major bulldozer action happened as illegal properties of high-profile accused in criminal cases were razed.
In December 2019, major portions of properties (including house and hotels) owned by influential businessman and popular tabloid owner Jeetu Soni were demolished. As many as 64 criminal cases were slapped against him in quick succession in Indore. Soni’s tabloid had published a series of exposes about an alleged high profile honey trap racket, which had shaken the corridors of power when Nath was CM.
Just a few days before the Nath government fell in the state on March 23, 2020, the authorities demolished a portion of a resort owned by former MP minister and BJP MLA Sanjay Pathak in Umaria district. The same wealthy Brahmin politician (who was earlier in the Congress) is believed to have played a key role in pulling the rug from under Nath’s feet.
Bulldozer justice continued with renewed vigour after Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the BJP’s longest serving CM till date, returned to power in March 2020. The most significant/controversial cases in that phase included the demolition of houses and shops of the accused in the killing of a tribal boy, during violent clashes between Muslims and tribals in Raisen district.
In April 2022, dozens of ‘illegally built’ houses and shops (including some constructed under the PM’s housing scheme), mostly owned by Muslims, were reportedly demolished in west MP’s Khargone district, citing their involvement in the attack on a Ram Navami procession and subsequent communal clashes. The riots had claimed the life of a Muslim youth. Besides, a Hindu teenager suffered serious brain injuries.
In July 2023, portions of an ‘illegally built’ house of Pravesh Shukla, who was accused of peeing on a tribal man in Sidhi district, was demolished. In the same month, major portions of the houses of three Muslim youth and teenagers arrested for spitting on a Hindu religious procession in Ujjain, were pulled down as an anti-encroachment measure.
In January 2024, the complainant and the prime prosecution witness turned hostile during the trial of the case, resulting in the grant of bail to the accused by the MP High Court.
The process of demolition justice continued even after Mohan Yadav became the new chief minister in Madhya Pradesh in December 2023. In the same month, around 10 meat shops were demolished in Bhopal and authorities also razed the homes of three men accused of attacking a BJP worker.
In June 2024, 11 houses built by Muslim families allegedly on government land were demolished in tribal-dominated Mandla district after the police found beef in refrigerators of some houses and the remains of slaughtered cows in other houses.
Bulldozer justice is not being selectively delivered only in BJP-ruled states. When the Congress was in power in Rajasthan, a major portion of a multi-storied building owned by a question paper leak accused was demolished by the local development authority in January 2023 during Ashok Gehlot’s tenure as chief minister.
According to recent media reports, the demolitions led to the freeing of 21,500 acres of land (public and private) worth Rs 18,000 crore from around 10,000 encroachments between 2020 and 2022 in MP. As for bulldozer justice against ‘illegal properties’ of the accused in criminal cases in the last 30 months, 259 demolitions happened across MP, which reportedly included 160 owned by minority community members. Of them, 54 such actions happened after Mohan Yadav became chief minister. Twenty-four of those properties were occupied by the minorities, while 30 pertained to the majority community.
Interestingly, the increased use of bulldozers has reportedly jacked up the machine’s price from Rs 22 lakh to Rs 40 lakh, besides having a similar effect on the per-hour rent.
Legal opinion
In February 2024, the Indore Bench of the MP High Court stated, “It has become fashionable for civic authorities to demolish homes without following proper procedure.”
A three-judge Supreme Court bench comprising justices Hrishikesh Roy, Sudhanshu Dhulia and S V N Bhatti, while hearing a plea from Gujarat’s Kheda district recently, stated that a person’s alleged involvement in a crime could not be the reason to demolish his/her property, adding that such action may be seen as “running a bulldozer over the laws of the land”.
“In a country where actions of the State are governed by the rule of law, the transgression by a family member cannot invite action against other members of the family or their legally-constructed residence. Alleged involvement in crime is no ground for the demolition of a property. Moreover, the alleged crime has to be proved through due legal process in a court of law. The court cannot be oblivious to such demolition threats inconceivable in a nation where law is supreme. Otherwise, such actions may be seen as running a bulldozer over the laws of the land,” it said.
According to senior Supreme Court advocate and Congress’s Rajya Sabha member Vivek Tankha, “bulldozer justice is pure insult of the criminal justice system and the judiciary. Governments resorting to such actions don’t have faith in the country’s judiciary and the Constitution. It is the best example of anarchy and dictatorship, of the nexus between the ruling politicians and the bureaucracy. It becomes even more painful when demolition justice targets people on the basis of their castes/community. Such patterns, which have particularly been visible in BJP-ruled states, suggest that the governments there have bypassed the judiciary and started behaving like a parallel judicial and self-proclaimed punishment system.”
A young Indore-based advocate of the MP High Court, who did not wish to be named, said, “How can anyone be punished twice for a single crime? Without waiting for the judiciary to take up trial in any criminal case, how can the authorities act against allegedly illegally constructed properties of any accused, particularly when those premises also house other members of his family or tenants?”
While stopping short of commenting on the Supreme Court halting the unauthorised demolitions, MP BJP president and second-time Lok Sabha member V D Sharma said, “Law will take its own course. No one irrespective of caste or community, will be spared, for breaking the law.”
