BHOPAL: The Madhya Pradesh High Court has ordered adequate protection to an additional district and sessions judge (ADJ) Tabassum Khan, who is facing life threats on social media from unidentified persons, over awarding life imprisonment to 14 men convicted for mob lynching a Maharashtra man in August 2022.
Hearing a suo moto petition related to the security of judicial officers in the state, a division bench of the MP High Court in Jabalpur, comprising Justices Vivek Agarwal and Avanindra Kumar Singh, has recently directed the police superintendent of Narmadapuram district to extend adequate protection to the concerned ADJ-Seoni Malwa, Tabassum Khan.
The MP HC also directed the SP-Narmadapuram district to inform the Court as to what steps have been taken to book the accused persons, who have created an atmosphere of threats to the judicial officer.
While listing the matter for further hearing on July 9, the MP HC also directed the state's DGP and additional chief secretary/principal secretary (home) to file their affidavit. The MP HC said, "Any order passed by the judicial officer is subject to judicial scrutiny as per the forum provided for said scrutiny, be it in the form of an appeal or a revision, but our judicial officer cannot be threatened merely because he or she chooses to pass a particular order, and that is not to the liking of a certain section of society."
Back on June 12, the woman Judge from the minority community, ADJ Tabassum Khan, had sentenced 14 men to life imprisonment after convicting them for the August 2022 mob lynching of an Amravati (Maharashtra) native Muslim man for alleged cow smuggling in central MP’s Narmadapuram district.
A few days after the court sentence, videos by unidentified men and women started circulating on social media in which the concerned judge was threatened with grave consequences for delivering the life imprisonment verdict on June 12, 2026.
One of those youngsters could be heard saying, “If our 14 Hindu brothers are not released within 10 days, there will be bloodshed across the country and the state.”
In another viral video, a woman can be seen threatening the same judge. “A Muslim became a judge and showed her true colours. She has become a jihadi judge. She sentenced our 14 Hindu brothers to life imprisonment. You will have to pay the price for this,” the woman can be heard saying.
Meanwhile, according to key sources in the state police, while a case has already been registered at Narmadapuram’s Seoni Malwa police station against unidentified accused for threatening the judge, with the help of the concerned social media platform, the police is close to identifying those seen in the videos threatening the judge.
