The spotlight is once again on Justice (retd) Behram Jahanbux Sethna. And this is owing to his appointment as chairman of the inquiry commission set up to probe the “polarisation of population” in Gujarat from August 15, 1947 till date.

A demand has been made that his appointment be terminated immediately. Jan Sangharsh Manch representative and senior advocate Mukul Sinha has declared to take up the matter with the government, for what Sinha says, is Justice Sethna’s “questionable” background.

In the past, Justice Sethna had hit headlines on several occasions due to his involvement in many controversies during his tenure as judge of the Gujarat and Rajasthan high courts.

As a judge of the Gujarat High Court, he had hit headlines in January 2004 when a two- judge bench headed by him upheld the judgment of the Vadodara fast-track court acquitting all the 21 accused in the Best Bakery mass murder case of 2002. But the Supreme Court not only rejected his judgment, also ordered a fresh trial by a special court in Mumbai and the accused were finally punished.

Justice Sethna was again in the eye of a judicial storm when on January 11, 2007, he allegedly assaulted another judge, Justice P B Majmudar. Although Justice Majmudar did not lodge any police complaint, he complained to the Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court in writing, saying Sethna had done some battameezi (misbehaviour) with him. But Sethna refuted the allegations, saying Justice Majmudar harboured a grudge against him because in April 2006, he had passed a highly critical order against Majmudar’s lawyer son for representing a complaint in a matter that had been heard earlier by his father, which amounts to an unethical practice.

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