If there is something sneakily similar between India’s home minister Sushilkumar Shinde and press council chairman (and a former supreme court judge) Markandey Katju, it has got to do with the coordination of their feet with their respective mouths, and their love to hear their own voices. And also the fact that they are a national calamity every time they decide to exercise their fondness for their voices and, voluntarily or otherwise, open their mouth.

Tuesday, April 2, was one such day. With hearts bleeding, they decided to stand up and do something for the “innocent Muslims” caught and “falsely implicated” in terror cases. Katju, a man known to sport thick-framed glasses and spout ideas that, in the absence of a nicer alternative, can be deemed a bit thick, announced his “court of last resort” — to help the aforesaid victims from the minority community.

As chairperson of a council that is a private entity, Katju is entitled to air his views and he should be wished the best. Till the next brainwave floors him.
But Shinde, who, as the minister in charge of internal security, among many others, holds a position that isn’t exactly private (if you ignore his itch to butter up Sonia Gandhi at every opportunity), said something potentially dangerous. He said fast-track courts would be set up to expedite trial of “innocent” Muslim youth accused of terror acts, the PTI reports.

Since he has not retracted his statement even a day after a day after All Fools Day, it can safely be assumed that Shinde wasn’t relaying a delayed April fool joke. In that, it is dangerous. Five curious posers for the union home minister:

1. Mr Shinde, if the law is equal for everyone, as the NCERT books and courtrooms in Bollywood flicks showing Lady Justice with a blindfold tell us, why fast-track courts only for “innocent” Muslim victims? Do non-Muslims not fall victim to police highhandedness? Or are they relatively less innocent than their Muslim brothers and sisters?

2. According to the website Issues of India, “at the end of 2011, around 3.2 crore cases were pending in high courts and subordinate courts across the country while 56,383 cases were pending in the Supreme Court”. The same update also says: “There are about 14,600 judges as against the sanctioned strength of about 17,600 (including 630 high court judges and 31 SC judges). In India there are 10.5 judges for every million people – compare it with Bangladesh 12 judges, Australia with 41. 6, Hungary with 70, Canada with 75.2, and the USA with 107 judges per million.”

So, Mr Shinde, if you take away more judges for your special fast-track courts to relieve the “innocent Muslims”, you will merely fatten the figures in these data. Let’s face it: we do not have enough judges to try regular cases. So where are we going to get the judges for special courts from? Mars?

3. The report in Hindu, giving the account of your delayed-April-1-joke-that-wasn’t announcement, said, “In December last, answering a question in the Rajya Sabha from Janata Dal (United) member Sabir Ali about details of ‘innocent Muslims languishing in various jails’, Shinde said data from the National Crime Records Bureau showed that as on December 2011, the total number of undertrials in prisons was more than 2.41 lakh, of whom 51,206 or 21.2 per cent were Muslims.”

No one wants an innocent to be in jail, but do the other nearly 1.9 lakh poor souls, or 78.8 percent undertrials in jails across India, not deserve an equally speedy trial? Or does the old lady take off her blindfolds bit by bit as elections draw closer?

4. At the Jaipur “chintan baithak”, presumably after much deliberation, as the name of the conclave suggests, you had blamed the BJP and RSS for harbouring “Hindu terror”. Without trying to sound communal, unlike you, honourable home minister, there are chances that the police and the NIA (under you) are arresting some of those "Hindu terrorists” as well. Chances are, like the “suspected” Hizbul Mujahideen Liaquat Shah, many of them are likely to have been arrested on trumped up charges.

Shorn of verbiage, that makes them innocent. And shorn of verbiage, again, that makes them entitled to freedom. But you do not want to hasten the case for them; is that what you mean, Mr Shinde?

5. Lastly, without acting like your alter ego with verbal diarrhoea, Markandey Katju, who dabbles with everything but things to do with the media and journalists, why don’t you focus on stuff that a home minister should focus on? Like the police, for instance? Even as you announced your clever idea, Mr Shinde, the chaps in uniform were beating a student leader to death in Kolkata. State policing, of course, is not your jurisdiction but internal security is, right? So why don’t you leave the bright ideas of fast-track courts and so forth to other ministries — law, for instance? — and bother yourself, and us, with things you ought to do?