Column

The executive inaction in curbing assaults on Indians in Australia and the lack of judicial response to that grave lapse makes the much-abused judicial system in India score a brownie point.

Perhaps, the Australian judiciary would have taken a suo motu call if Australians were being attacked. In sharp contrast, if a foreign national had complained of discriminatory human rights violation by an Indian or the state in India, the judiciary here wouldn’t have thought twice before seeking the state’s response or directing for restoration of the visitors’ human rights.

Over a decade and half ago, then chief justice Adarsh Sein Anand ruled that a foreigner is also entitled to the sacred right to live with dignity and ordered the railway ministry to pay a hefty compensation to a Bangladeshi woman who was raped in a railway rest room in West Bengal.

Justice Anand reasoned that the state or Indian government is under a Constitutional obligation to protect the life of its citizens and also ensure safety to visitors from abroad. Armed with the Anand judgment, the court enlarged its ambit. Judges ignored the reality that some terrorists had taken many, including children, hostage at a Srinagar mosque and directed security forces to provide the hostages and terrorists a fixed amount of calories to eat every day, even foiling the forces’ strategy to cut off supplies to the terrorists to make them bend.

Despite massive public outcry, the judges maintained they were bound to uphold constitutional guarantees. Since then, the judiciary hasn’t looked back. It may be accused of giving its ears to the powerful and mighty, but many an aam aadmi will dispute that.

Back to Australia. A chance can be taken by filing a PIL before Supreme Court seeking to know from the Centre what action it has taken to protect helpless Indians in Australia and other countries. The Supreme Court’s jurisdiction, after all, extends to Indians wherever they are.