Mahmudabad case: Why people are disappointed by Justice Surya Kant’s words

It may just be a coincidence that the next judge in line to become the Chief Justice of India in November 2025 happens to hail from the same state as the chairperson of the Haryana Women’s Commission.

At the same time, this coincidence may not be the reason why their thoughts converged on a Facebook post by Prof. Ali Khan Mahmudabad from Ashoka University — which too, as coincidence would have it, is in Haryana.

Both the justice and the chairperson felt the post was hurtful and insulting. Both seemed to agree that the post was mischievous, anti-woman and, of course, anti-national.

So, as is well known by now, they did what they had to. Ms Renu Bhatia, the women’s commission chairperson, filed a police complaint, accusing the professor of seditious activity. The police promptly arrested the professor. Protests from faculty members, students, academics and an appeal signed by 1,100 scholars demanding his release were ignored.

The court initially refused to release him on bail — despite the post being publicly available and there being no ostensible reason for his detention or custodial interrogation (though reports suggest that the police wanted to visit the professor’s ancestral home to make further inquiries) — and he was sent to jail.

The professor approached the Supreme Court for relief and demanded that the FIR against him be quashed.

He had actually appreciated the armed forces and their decision to draft a Muslim woman officer from the Indian Army and a Hindu Air Force officer to brief the media. It was powerful optics, he acknowledged, and sent out a message of unity and harmony. He went on to suggest that the optics would, however, remain just that, unless similar unity, consideration and empathy were shown to ordinary Muslims being lynched and assaulted on the streets.

In the judgement of 21 May 2025, a Supreme Court bench presided over by Justice Surya Kant and including also Justice N. Koteshwar Singh, granted interim bail to the professor to ‘facilitate’ the investigation against himself.

He was also asked to surrender his passport and was sternly directed not to post any further comments online on Operation Sindoor.

Even more shockingly, the Supreme Court ordered the Haryana DGP to constitute a special investigation team (SIT) of three senior police officers to conduct a forensic examination of the post/posts. Since the police officers are also from Haryana and their level of comprehension and knowledge of the English language and literature is likely to be of a piece, the outcome is possibly a foregone conclusion.

The terse, two-page judgement — which does not assign any reason for the conditional bail — has shocked both lawyers and non-lawyers because just the day before, on 20 May 2025, the bench of Justice Surya Kant had rapped a Madhya Pradesh minister on the knuckles and let him off with an apology for a far more serious offence.

The minister, Vijay Shah, had described the Muslim army officer who briefed the media to be the ‘sister of terrorists’.

The minister was asked to say sorry and a SIT with three IPS officers ordered to make further inquiries. Since the minister continues to hold his office and the police officers are from the Madhya Pradesh cadre, the outcome is again predictable.

There is serious alarm at these two judgements among both lawyers and legal scholars.

Meanwhile, social media has been flooded with sarcastic comments and memes. It appears to be just a matter of time before complaints are lodged against these posts, with the police — and the Supreme Court — jumping in to take cognisance.

The possibility appears especially high because in his judgement of Wednesday, 21 May, Justice Surya Kant also put out a veiled threat to teachers and students speaking out in defence of Professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad. Accusing the professor of ‘dog whistling’, the CJI-to-be warned him that the court knew how to deal with such elements.

Supreme Court lawyer Sanjay Ghose posted with tongue firmly in cheek: ‘Indian jurisprudence just made great strides towards gender justice — it brought about the surya-ast on the test of a “Reasonable Man” and replaced it with the test of a “WhatsApp Aunty”!’

Legal writer Saurav Das wrote in Frontline, ‘In Prof. Mahmudabad’s case, rather than confronting the dubiousness of the FIRs or offering categorical relief, Justice Surya Kant’s bench has chosen to cloak an absolutely punitive approach in the garb of liberty.’

In a blog post laced with sarcasm, lawyer and legal scholar Gautam Bhatia wondered, ‘where is the dog?’ and ‘where is the whistle?’

Lawyer Prashant Bhushan said he agreed with each word written by Professor Mahmudabad and expressed he was astounded by the academic’s arrest in the first place.

The reaction outside the legal fraternity has been equally severe and sarcastic.

One post on X read, “Since J. Kant (can't), he's asked the SIT to do his homework.”

Another user said, “I hope Justice Surya Kant reads this blog. If Mahmudabad's post is dog whistling, how should we describe the anti-Muslim slogans and hate speech from a union minister at a rally?”

Yet another comment on X wrote, “Tale of two SITs. Given the prima facie evidence, it would seem, in one, the effort is to find something somehow redeeming in the overtly communal horrid words, while in the other, the effort is to find something somehow damning and seditious by reading between the lines.”

In an equally sarcastic video post, former TV anchor and YouTuber Ravish Kumar called for a nationwide movement against speaking out. If only people stop speaking their mind, there would be no need to constitute SITs, he suggested. Instead of writing words, people should make do with dots. IPS officers can then interpret the dots according to their convenience and thus save time!

Gautam Bhatia’s blog post notes, ‘On a perusal of the informal record, we find the Court observing that Mahmudabad’s post may have amounted to a ‘dog whistle’. Now, a dog whistle requires three things: first, a whistle. Secondly, a bunch of dogs who are able to hear the whistle when it is whistled at dog ear-frequency. And thirdly, all the non-dogs who can’t hear the whistle. And if Mahmudabad’s post was indeed a dog whistle (and therefore a breach of law), then it behoves the Court to inform us which part of it was the whistling, who are the dogs that the whistle wanted to attract, and who are all the non-dogs who wouldn’t be able to hear a thing…’