Newsmaker | Former Madhya Pradesh HC judge Rohit Arya joins BJP, had denied bail to comedian Munawar Faruqui

Former Madhya Pradesh High Court judge Rohit Arya who hit the headlines several times during his tenure has yet again grabbed the spotlight three months after his retirement by joining the BJP on Saturday in the presence of Deputy Chief Minister Rajendra Shukla.

Addressing a seminar, Justice Arya said that “changing the Penal Code to Justice Code is a significant achievement” of the current government. “We are grateful to the Central government for this. This will improve lives in the coming times as the Penal Code was imposed on Indians during British rule and implemented with the intention of punishing them. The spirit of justice existed in our country during the Ram Rajya and Mahabharata era as well. The British were shaken by our culture and spirituality, so while attacking education, they gradually eliminated Sanskrit and promoted English,” he said.

Arya who began his legal career in 1984 was designated as senior advocate on August 26, 2003 by the Madhya Pradesh High Court. He has almost three decades of legal experience in civil, arbitration, administrative, service, labour and tax laws.

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Throughout his career, Arya held several key positions. He was empanelled as the senior panel counsel for Madhya Pradesh in the Supreme Court between 2007 and 2013 and also served as the standing counsel for the Income Tax Department in the Madhya Pradesh High Court from 1999 to 2012. Concurrently, he was also the senior counsel for the Income Tax department in Chhattisgarh between 2009 and 2012.

From 1991 to 2003, Arya represented the Telecom Department in the Madhya Pradesh High Court and Jabalpur bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT). Between 1994 and 2000, he was the standing counsel for the Central government in the CAT and later served as the standing counsel for the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) in the Madhya Pradesh High Court and the Jabalpur bench of the CAT between 2003 and 2013.

He was appointed Madhya Pradesh High Court judge on September 12, 2013, and became a permanent judge on March 26, 2015. During his tenure, Arya presided over several cases that grabbed the headlines.

In 2021, he denied bail to stand-up comedians Munawar Faruqui and Nalin Yadav who were accused of hurting religious sentiments and violating Covid-19 protocols during a show in Indore. He observed that the “evidence collected shows outraging religious feelings of a class of citizens of India with deliberate intendment”.

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“The State must endeavour to ensure that this ecosystem and sustenance of coexistence in our welfare society is not polluted by negative forces,” the court observed. The Supreme Court later granted bail to Faruqui while setting aside the High Court order.

In another such case which had made news the year earlier, Arya granted bail to a man accused of outraging the modesty of a woman on the condition that he present himself to the complainant on the day of Raksha Bandhan and get a rakhi tied on his wrist. The accused was also directed to promise that he would “protect” the complainant.

The decision was met with staunch criticism and was later overturned by the Supreme Court, which also issued directives to lower courts on handling bail pleas in cases related to crimes against women. The Supreme Court said lower courts should “desist from expressing any stereotype opinion such as women are physically weak, should be submissive and obedient, good women are sexually chaste, among other others”.