We are very well familiar about one of the most famous justices in our times, Justice Markandey Katju. His love for urdu, and poetry has always been an area of attraction to the general public as well. After all who has not heard the two liners from the most celebrated judgement on euthanasia (Aruna Ramchandra Shanbaug v Union of India):

"Marte hain aarzoo mein marne ki Maut aati hai par nahin aati" -- Mirza Ghalib

After his retirement as a Judge of the Supreme Court of India, he was appointed as the Chairman of Press Council of India, and during all the time he occupied that office, he was the grundnorm from where the ‘Freedom of Speech and Expression’ was being eminated and nurtured. And after retiering from this office as well, he has gone into 'God' mode. I am not going to discuss about how the rationale behind his statements are equivalent to that of Aditya Birla Groups Marketing Team for thinking of an ad like IIN, i.e. even a negative publicity makes you popular, or how he is allowed by the law, and yes he is because he was a Judge in Supreme Court of India and so he is allowed everything, to say anything to anyone in the name of free speech and ‘truth’, including that probably I am an idiot (if you know what I mean, or click here).

This post is about how shamelessly an ‘Honourable’ Judge can plagiarise work of other writers and post it as his own. On 14/06/2015 I came across a post by Justice Katju, yes he is in my friend list even though I am an ‘idiot’ and I feel so blessed for that. The post of course was a wonderful shayari by His Lordship:

The post read as follows:

"कोई टोपी तो कोई अपनी पगड़ी बेच देता है 
मिले भाव अच्छा तो मुंसिफ फ़ैसला बेच देता है
तवायफ़ फिर भी अच्छी है, कोठे ही में बैठी है 
नेता तो सारा देश बेच देता है"

Not boosting anything, but beside legal reading and writing, I have been into reading poems and proses from all over around and at the same time have been writing my own as well. Somehow, this post struck me as already read from past, and so I 'Googled'. What I found was most surprising. You can have a look yourself and decide:

I found that the prose posted by Justice Katju was actually a mere modification of a part of a poem from a blog Hamzabaan, which was published in 2012. Ofcourse His Lordship tried to SpinBot the post in order to avoid Turnitin, but sorry sir, it failed. On comparision I found two very important modification which Justice Katju did in his post from the previous one, and they are:

Law for protection of copyright only protects the expression of idea, and so with the two significant changes as shown above makes it a completely different expression of the same idea. Probably an undergraduate specialisation in Intellectual Property Rights was of no use to me, as I wasn't aware of the tricks of the game.

Now what is more funny here is that in the matter of Mehboob Batcha & Ors. v State Rep. by Supdt. of Police, a landmark case of custodial violance, decided by His Lordship and Her Ladyship Justice Gyan Sudha Mishra, Justice Katju had mentioned a prose in the judgement:

"Bane hain ahal-e-hawas muddai bhi munsif bhi, Kise vakeel karein kisse munsifi chaahen"-- Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Ofcourse you know now that why I am mentioning this post; it is regarding one of the two major changes, 'munsif'. On a personal note, I remembered this prose and the judgement of His Lordship, which actually forced me to become Sherlock and find the root of all of these, is that I had used it in one of the research papers I had written during my law school days. (Click Here) So basicaly, the motivation of one of the two major changes which make a distinction is from a pre-used source. Well it's not a crime, but is worth mentioning in order to put the whole image in the frame.

Now till here things can be considered in hand and can be dealt with easily, but what follows next is the real mayhem.

When we read Mr. Asif Rizvi's comments it clearly signifies that he had previously pointed out that the post need proper citation of the real author of the prose, but the comment mentioning the same was deleted by His Lordship. If we follow the timeline, then this happened 4 hours before the snapshot was taken. In a question asked 5 hours before the snapshot was taken, by Mr. Obaid Ur Rehman, asking to know if this was written by Justice Katju himself or not, His Lordship replies with prevenance 'Ji' (yes).

So probably it would have gone like this, one of the idiots would have asked the question to which it would have been replied in affirmative. Then another idiot would have raised the query in regard to validity of the post being authored by His Lordship or not, and the comment was deleted. And then the idiot showed guts again and commented about the post and his previous comment again. Justice Katju's post 'Ji' is liked by 30 idiots, while Mr. Asif's post is liked (which most probably means read0 by 5 idiots. 

Well Mr. Asif, and all other idiots like him, be ready to be either blocked or removed from the friendlist of His Lordship as he shows his anger against the idiots who don't follow his line of thought or mostly who fail in appreciating what he writes. If you don't believe me then please read this post from an unknown person which I had received in December:

Just the first line is sufficient enough to give you the clue.

As far as I am concerned, I believe I will continue to be an idiot, writing against what is wrong, even if it is being done by a person who has served in the apex judicial institution of the Country, who is setting the parameters for 'who is an idiot'. I have been blocked before by him, and then unblocked because he had a good day and he wanted to give few idiots like me one more chance. I am ready to be slammed with a reply post if you wish so, but Sir you have failed your readers.

In the end, keeping the sarcasm aside, this is an outright matter of plagiarism and must be dealt seriously under the provisions of the law. I am not sure if the blog I cited is the real author of the poem or not, but what I know is Justice Katju isn't. The author, or her/his representatives should ideally file an infringement suit against Justice Katju for this instance. And an ending word of advice Your Lordship, you aren't the only reader or writer of urdu in the nation. There are few other idiots who read and write, regardless of whether more or less than you. It should be your moral duty to cite the author or to use the prevelent method in writing, 'benaam'.