Justice Cyriac Joseph is in the news for the wrong reasons.
He is the Lok Ayukta in Kerala. I had a little connection with him.
I learned this while I had a chit-chat with him when he was a judge of the Supreme Court.In the early seventies, the private college managements in Kerala closed down their colleges in protest against some decisions of the state government.
The association which gave the call for closure was led by the late Bishop Benedict Mar Gregorios. The late Fr John Vallamatom was the secretary.I wrote a letter to the editor of The Hindu criticizing the closure of colleges.
I argued that they had no right to deny education to the students from whom they had extracted fees.I was very happy to see my long letter appearing in the newspaper.
A few days later, a reply to the letter appeared from Fr Vallamatom, who many years later, became a close friend. Justice Cyriac Joseph told me that he was a lawyer at that time and it was he who drafted the letter.
Kerala Club, of which I am now the vice-president, gave him a farewell when he retired from the Supreme Court. The theme of his speech was the limitations a judge had to answer criticism.
His advice to the people was that they were within their rights to criticize a judgment if they found the arguments or findings legally untenable but they had no right to attribute motives to the judge.
A.J. Philip