National Fisherfolk forum 'pained' by Justice Chandrachud's 'fish market' remark, wants SC judge to withdraw comment

A national-level fishermen’s body has taken objection to Supreme Court judge, Justice DY Chandrachud’s ‘fish market’ remark during the hearing of a public interest litigation seeking an independent probe in CBI judge BH Loya’s death. According to report in  Bar & Bench, National Fisherfolk Forum, a national confederation of state-level fisher federations, said: “The utterance of Honourable Justice is tantamount to disrespecting the total fisher communities and so highly condemnable.”

Fisher community takes offence to a comment by Justice DY Chandrachud in #JudgeLoya case hearing.
The judge referred to "fish market" to criticise the high-decibel arguments but a group now wants him to withdraw the comment since it reportedly paints the community in bad colour. pic.twitter.com/c03cwKlGVw

— Utkarsh Anand (@utkarsh_aanand) February 8, 2018

[caption id=“attachment_4341469” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of the Supreme Court. AP[/caption] During the hearing of the case, two senior lawyers Dushayant Dave and Pallav Shishodia engaged in a verbal duel, which irked the justice, who asked the lawyers to ’not reduce the dialogue in this court to the level of a fish market." It is this comment the fishermen community has taken umbrage to, stating they were ‘pained’ and ‘bewildered’ as a community on the justice’s remarks. “We would like to know from the Honourable Justice the earthly need to mention the fish market in this case. More so, we would like to know why the activities of the fish market should be mentioned in such bad colour,” the report quoted the fishermen community’s statement as saying. The body has demanded that Justice Chnadrachud takes back his comments in the same forum where it was uttered. Taking note of the acrimonious exchange of words in the court on 5 February, the bench had said, “This is unpardonable” and told the two lawyers (Dave and Shishodia) that their language was not good as this kind of dialogue would “shame even a fish market.” “Courtesy begets courtesy,” the bench said, adding that sometimes, the words used are “unbecoming” of a lawyer. “Let us not reduce the dialogue in this court to the level of a fish market. You should not shout down a judge who is saying something. You will have to listen to me, Mr Dave… You address when your turn comes,” Justice DY Chandrachud, who was part of the bench presided over by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, had told Dave, representing Bombay Lawyers Association.