Mathews J Nedumpara
98205 35428
24.12.2025.

To the Chief Justice of India.

Open Letter

Sir,

I write these few lines while waiting to join the online hearing of a case of mine posted at 3 PM today, before the Chief Justice of Bombay. Now it is 3:08 and I am not admitted.
The following words are displayed:
“Thanks for waiting. Public viewing of the proceedings has been disabled by the Hon’ble Court. If you have an appearance scheduled, please remain present until your case is officially called.”

This message takes my memories back to 2010 and even before, when I started the campaign for video recording of court proceedings and preservation of records as the simple solution for the gross injustice, abuse of power, and corruption in all forms and varieties which has eroded the sanctity, credibility, nay, the very utility of our courts as an instrument of dispensation of justice. After a sustained campaign for more than a decade, the SC had, in Swapnil Tiwari, declared that video recording of court proceedings and access to such records as an integral part of the freedom of speech and expression guaranteed under Article 19.

I was the lead petitioner in the said batch of petitions. However, Justice Chandrachud ensured that my name does not appear as the lead petitioner. I will not elaborate on it, for it does not matter whether my name appears as a lead petitioner or not. Justice Chandrachud seemingly thought that my name appearing as the lead petitioner would mean recognition of my effort for video recording.

The credibility of the Indian judiciary, I am afraid to say, has eroded to a large extent, and it seems to me that it may further erode. Krishna Iyer had said PIL will destroy the Indian judiciary, for power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

As someone who had entered the portals of the court in 1979 as a litigant and since 1984 as a lawyer, I can, in all humility and with utmost responsibility, say that corruption in all its forms and varieties is a real threat to the Indian judiciary. The tentacles of corruption have spread everywhere in its corpus. Even before we could recover from the shock “Mahatma Gandhi jal raha hain”, the fireman’s lamentation while dousing the fire that had caught on sacks of currency, we hear of yet another scam again involving a judge of the Delhi HC. It is difficult to brush it aside as a rumour without substance because such allegations are no longer uncommon. As a lawyer who has spent a lifetime campaigning passionately for reforms, a judiciary whose credibility cannot be in doubt, I feel devastated. It is no longer that litigants and fellow lawyers talk to me about judicial corruption; many retired and sitting judges share the anguish.
The lawyers and the litigants who seek justice are at crossroads. We feel devastated. I go to a court in the hope that the judge will be just and fair, uninfluenced by any other external factors. Later I hear many things and I realise I was wrong; justice was compromised.
The judges are emperors today. All powers are vested in them. Not only in the appointment of judges, in every appointment judges have a role. Parliament has been reduced to a subordinate tribunal.

The only ray of hope was video recording of court proceedings, live streaming, and preservation of such records. Publicity, said Bentham, “is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion and the surest of all guards against improbity. It keeps the judge himself, while trying, under trial.”

I am shocked by the action of the CJ in literally abandoning the live streaming of the proceedings of his court, even restricting entry to lawyers and litigants.

I believe all reforms have to be through constitutional and legal means and not by democratic means, entering the streets. I am sure that the CJI and all concerned will not fail to see the anguish and pain of my humble self, which is the pain and agony of every lawyer, litigant, nay, citizens. In that unstinted faith, I remain.

Yours Sincerely
Mathews J Nedumpara.