A plea has been filed in SC on Thursday which was drawn by advocate Dr. Neela Gokhale and was filed by AOR Anannya Ghosh of a 94 year Old woman who is seeking for the Proclamation of Emergency of 1975 to be Declared as unconstitutional and also a compensation of Rs. 25 crores from authorities who participated in it.
The plea says that the burial of the darkest chapter in Indian democracy is yet to provide respite to the petitioner who suffered atrocities at the hands of the authorities during the Emergency period of 1975. The petition also declares that-“the present petition is a plea for justice and restitution of a lifetime spent in utter misery and anguish on account of the atrocities suffered by the petitioner, her deceased husband and her family.”
The petitioner relies on the 2017 Judgment of KS Puttaswamy (Retd.) V. Union of India in which a 5-Judge bench decision of ADM Jabalpur V. Shivkant Shukla (1976) was overruled.
The petitioner claims that, as the victim of emergency the then government authorities in order to plunder their business and homes of victims targeted the petitioner’s Husband with unjustifiable detention orders which finally led them to flee from country. She also says that- “His business was shut down, assets and valuables including immovable property was seized and appropriated. The Petitioner’s husband succumbed to the pressure and died. Since then the Petitioner has been single-handedly facing all proceedings initiated against her husband during the Emergency period, which were arbitrarily pursued.”
The petitioner in the plea at this phase of her life has sought for the fulfillment of her desire to achieve closure to the life time trauma and receive the acknowledgement for her sacrifice.
The matter is probably to be listed in 2nd week of December before the bench of Justice S K Kaul.
