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Ex-AMU VC moves SC to intervene in pleas against bulldozer action
"Bulldozer justice" is criticised as extrajudicial punishment targeting Muslims without due process.
“Bulldozer justice”, a term increasingly used to describe the use of demolition tactics against individuals accused or suspected of criminal activities, is akin to “extrajudicial executions” adopted as punishment by a state to target the Muslim community, without following due process, former Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) vice-chancellor and army veteran Zameer Uddin Shah told the Supreme Court on Monday.
In an application seeking intervention in a bench of petitions demanding pan-India guidelines on razing of properties, Shah said that having retired as deputy chief of Army Staff in 2008, he never experienced any discrimination on grounds of religion but is now aggrieved by the “targeted and punitive demolitions”, without any issuance of show cause notices, personal hearing or judicial review.
The application was filed through advocate Prashant Bhushan and will be taken up on Tuesday, as the top court will resume hearing petitions filed by the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind and other organisations/individuals against demolition of properties as a punitive measure against a person accused of a crime.
“These are not individualised acts, but a pattern of collective punishment adopted by the state, unfound in criminal law. They are more like ‘extra-judicial executions’. Such demolitions are carried out under the guise of enforcing municipal or land use laws or regulations, often without adhering to any due process of law,” Shah, who served as AMU vice-chancellor from 2012 to 2017, said.
Such actions are often against political dissenters and a “significant number of these demolition drives have disproportionately targeted the Muslim community”, he said, citing an Amnesty International report titled “Bulldozer Injustice in India – 2024”, which said that data collected between August 2022 and August 2023 showed that majority of the evictions and demolitions were discriminatory and carried out to target the Muslim community.
“When houses are demolished, an entire family/community is punished. This is against the basic legal principle that no one can be punished for an offence they have not personally committed,” the application said.
On September 2, the top court said it would issue guidelines to regulate demolitions across India– a move that comes in the background of local governments and police demolishing the properties of people accused of crimes, and, sometimes, of their families, often using earthmovers or bulldozers, without following due process.
Days later, on September 12, the top court said the growing practice of demolishing properties of individuals accused of crimes is “inconceivable in a nation where law is supreme”, and if not checked, this pernicious practice “may be seen as running a bulldozer over the laws of the land.”
Meanwhile, other petitioners, in their pleas, highlighted the need for issuance of show cause notices prior to demolition of any property, with the notice clearly mentioning the reason behind such an action. The petitioners also sought a minimum of two months to file one’s response to the notice and time to appeal in the court.
