SC: Illegal bldgs akin to rape, murder

If we start allowing such regularisations, then we will have to regularise murder and rape also in the country: Justice Dave

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday said illegal constructions were as serious an offence as murder and rape, and if there were brazen violations, there was no way they could be regularised.

But trying to drive home the point, Justice A R Dave ended up saying “if we start allowing such regularisations, then we will have to regularise murder and rape also in the country”.

The comments, which raised many eyebrows in the courtroom, came when the owner of an illegal Chennai multi-storey building pleaded for its regularisation and challenged a previous demolition order by the Madras HC. Denying any relief to the petitioner, the court ordered the complete demolition of the illegal structure.

In August last year during a public speech, the judge had again courted controversy by saying that had he been a dictator, he would have made the Gita and the Mahabharata compulsory in schools.

Judges are not new to controversies. In November last year, two judges of the Delhi HC had triggered a row after they concluded that forceful sex with a 65-year-old woman beyond the age of menopause does not constitute rape.

In June last year, a Delhi court had blamed women for consensually eloping with their lovers “to satiate their sexual cravings” and then turn around and allege rape after pressure from their parents.

An even more bizarre observation came from the Delhi High Court in 2008, when a judge, while setting free a man charged with killing a sex worker after a fight over payment after having sex, said the trial court had erred in convicting the alleged killer.

The bench went on to justify the observation by saying that the trial court had failed to note that as per the medical report of the deceased, the woman was found severely under-nourished and hence, she could not have been a prostitute.

“Obviously, considering her ill health, it is clear that her husband was not caring for her. Had she been a prostitute, she would have earned enough to keep the body physically fit, at least not in the condition in which it was. It is difficult to accept that the deceased was a prostitute…,” the high court said.