Jaipur's additional chief judicial magistrate is certainly in high Gere. His non-bailable arrest warrant against Shilpa Shetty and Richard Gere for committing an “obscene act”, because of their good-humoured clinch during an AIDS awareness function some days ago, needs to be thrown out with great force when it comes before a higher court. By judging the Gere buzz as “highly sexually erotic” and betraying a “tendency to corrupt the society”, the magistrate displayed not just a gross lack of proportion, not just a unsettling lack of confidence in Indian society’s ability to resist such “corruption”, but a disturbing arrogance in emerging as arbiter of national morals. Such uninformed orders should invite the scrutiny of the higher judiciary.

But our problem with this judgment is not just with the narrow bandwidth of one magistrate. The petition should not have been entertained in the first place. Here was a litigant who, on watching Shetty and Gere on television, decided that what he saw was obscene and worthy of court intervention. The country is not short of individuals like him who ascribe unto themselves the power to decide what constitutes “acceptable behaviour”. But should they be allowed access to the court’s time and attention? Absolutely not. Our over-burdened institutions of justice should be spared the zealous exertions of the morality crusaders and other assorted eccentrics. The litigant in this instance was what one who may be termed as a habitual offender. He is believed to have filed innumerable PILs in Rajasthan’s courts.

The Law Commission, having taken note of innumerable Supreme Court judgments voicing unhappiness over the filing of frivolous public interest litigation, has even recommended a law allowing the advocate general, or registrars of the high court, or the persons against whom such a case is filed, to move the courts to declare such a person a ‘vexatious litigant’, who will then be debarred from going to the courts. The litigant in the Jaipur case certainly fits the definition of a ‘vexatious litigant’. Instead of arresting Shetty and Gere, we suggest that suitable action be taken against this individual.

editor@expressindia.com