Justice (retd) Behram Jahanbux Sethna is no stranger to the spotlight. This time it’s been trained on him owing to his appointment as chairman of an Inquiry Commission to probe and “stop” the “polarisation of the population” of different communities in Gujarat from August 15, 1947 until date. While this exercise itself has been criticised by NGOs and human rights activists as being aimed at harassing the minorities and blaming them for “ghettoisation”, the appointment of Sethna has raked up a controversy too. Already, Jan Sangharsh Manch representative and senior advocate Mukul Sinha has declared that he will take up the matter of the retired judge’s “questionable background” with the Government.

His allegations stem from the time Justice Sethna made headlines owing to several controversies during his stints as judge of the Gujarat and Rajasthan high courts.

One of the several times he became the focus of national attention was in January 2004, when as part of a two-judge Bench judge of the Gujarat High Court, he upheld the judgment of the Vadodara fast-track court, acquitting all the 21 accused in the Best Bakery case.

However, the Supreme Court not only rejected his verdict but ordered a fresh trial by a special court in Mumbai.

Justice Sethna was in the eye of a judicial storm again when on January 11, 2007, he allegedly assaulted another judge, P B Majumdar. Incidentally, just days before this incident, Sethna caused quite a flutter when a video clip of him flexing his muscles — he is a body builder — appeared in an advertisement clip for a gym.

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