Why Bela Trivedi retired as a deeply unpopular judge

“I expected your ladyship to have some empathy,” lawyer Kapil Sibal recalled telling Justice Bela Madhurya Trivedi after she had refused his client’s request for transfer from Karnataka to Kerala in a matter involving the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

“You don’t know me then,” Trivedi had shot back.

On May 16, Sibal, the Supreme Court Bar Association’s president narrated this anecdote in front of the ceremonial bench constituted to honour Justice Trivedi on her last working day.

Sibal was taking a dig at the reputation Trivedi had developed: a judge who was likely to reject bail applications, especially in politically sensitive cases. And someone who, especially in the last few months of her tenure, frequently clashed with lawyers. This led to the Supreme Court Bar Association and the Supreme Court Advocates on Record Association both declining to give her a farewell.

Trivedi could have been remembered as a trailblazer. She is one of only eleven women to have been a judge at the Supreme Court and the only female Supreme Court judge hailing from Gujarat. Beginning her judicial career in 1995 as a city civil and sessions court judge in Ahmedabad, she is also a rare district court judge whose career trajectory took her all the way up to the Supreme Court. For judges in the lower judiciary, elevation as a High Court judge is usually the highest office they can rise to.

Instead, she will be remembered as a deeply unpopular judge.

Scroll looks back at her controversial near-four-year tenure at the Supreme Court.

No bail outs

Trivedi was elevated to the Supreme Court from the Gujarat High Court in August 2021. According to a study by the Supreme Court Observer, till October 2024, almost 40% of the judgements authored by her as a Supreme Court judge were in criminal law matters – an unusually large number.

Her track record in many of these showed that she went against the oft-repeated adage by the Supreme Court that “bail is the rule, jail is the exception”.

The most well-known example of this was her denial of bail to activist and scholar Umar Khalid. The bail plea of Khalid, arrested in a conspiracy case involving the 2020 Delhi riots, was listed before a bench led by Trivedi over a dozen times without any hearing over 14 months. Finally, seeing the writing on the wall, he withdrew his petition from the Supreme Court, choosing to try his luck in lower courts instead.

In 2024, a bench led by Trivedi dismissed bail applications by two other accused in the case – activists Gulfisha Fatima and Sharjeel Imam – on the grounds that their bail applications were already pending before the Delhi High Court.

Paradoxically, Fatima and Imam had approached the apex court for intervention since the Delhi High Court had been sitting on their bail applications for over two and a half years at that point.

Fatima and Imam have been imprisoned for over five years now.

A Scroll report earlier this year showed that there is no substantive evidence that has been presented against Khalid, Fatima, Imam or the other accused in the case.

Trivedi stayed the bail granted by a High Court to another young activist, Mahesh Raut, arrested in the Bhima Koregaon conspiracy case, in which academics and activists were accused of inciting caste violence during a 2018 commemoration of Dalit soldiers who had defeated the Marathas.

Raut, who had been in detention since 2018, was given bail by the Bombay High Court in September 2023. In its order, the High Court wrote that it “cannot be said that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accusations against [Raut] is prima-facie true”. However, the court stayed its bail order for one week at the National Investigation Agency’s request to permit it to challenge the order before the Supreme Court.

The agency’s appeal against the High Court’s bail order came up before a bench led by Trivedi. Trivedi ordered that the bail order remain suspended till the appeal is decided. The appeal remains pending and Raut continues to be incarcerated despite being granted bail almost two years ago.

A bench involving Trivedi had in October 2022 suspended a Bombay High Court order acquitting former Delhi University professor GN Saibaba and five others in a case in which Saibaba and the others were sentenced to life imprisonment for having alleged links with left-wing extremist groups. The bench assembled on a Saturday – a court holiday – only a day after the High Court’s order.

Saibaba was eventually acquitted and released by the Bombay High Court in March 2024. He passed away seven months later. In an interview with Scroll after his release, the activist – who was differently abled and used a wheelchair – said he was denied adequate medical care and dignified living conditions in jail.

Trivedi was also notorious for denying bail to Opposition leaders.

In March 2024, a bench led by Trivedi not only refused bail to Aam Aadmi Party leader Satyendar Jain in an alleged money-laundering case, but also cancelled his interim bail for health reasons and asked the former Delhi minister to surrender immediately. Jain was eventually granted bail by a lower court later that year.

A few days later, another bench involving her did not grant bail to Bharat Rashtra Samithi leader K Kavitha, arrested for her alleged involvement in the Delhi liquor policy scam case. Instead, she was asked to approach a lower court, even though the Supreme Court is empowered to grant bail. Another bench of the Supreme Court eventually granted her bail in August 2024.

In November 2023, her bench denied bail to then Tamil Nadu Minister and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader V Senthil Balaji. Balaji had been arrested in June that year for allegedly conspiring with transport corporation officials to appoint candidates recommended by his aides. He was eventually granted bail by a different bench of the court in September last year.

Apart from rejecting bail applications, Trivedi would also cancel bail granted by High Courts. For example, the son of a Janata Dal (United) legislator, members of the Popular Front of India and businessmen accused of defrauding banks had their bails reversed by Trivedi. The Supreme Court rarely cancels bail granted by a High Court, that too in only extraordinarily limited circumstances.

Due to Trivedi’s penchant for bail denial, academic Hany Babu, arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case, Salim Malik, booked and arrested as an accused in Delhi riots larger conspiracy case and former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, arrested at that time in the alleged Delhi liquor policy scam, were among many who, like Khalid, tactically withdrew their bail applications from the Supreme Court when they were listed before Trivedi.

Out-of-turn case allocation

So controversial was Trivedi that one of the criticisms often applied to former Chief Justice DY Chandrachud was that he often arbitrarily listed bail cases involving political dissenters or opposition members before her. In December 2023, Article 14 drew attention to eight politically-sensitive matters being moved before Trivedi, contrary to the Supreme Court’s rules of case assignment. According to these rules, cases must be heard by the senior judge before whom the case was first listed or listed before a judge hearing a similar case.

Senior Advocate Dushyant Dave and lawyer Prashant Bhushan wrote separate letters highlighting irregularities in case listing at the Supreme Court and the allocation of particular cases to Trivedi’s bench under Chandrachud.

However, such strictness was not extended by her to cases involving members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party or its ideological supporters.

In August 2024, a bench led by her rejected petitions seeking the cancellation of bail granted to one of the Hindutva ideologueas accused of plotting the assassination of journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh.

In January 2024, another bench led by her granted protection from arrest to BJP Union Minister Nisith Pramanik, who was accused in an attempt to murder case.

A few days earlier, the same bench upheld the acquittal of Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Mishra Teni in a 2000 murder case.

Between 2004 and 2006, while she was a district court judge, Trivedi was deputed as Law Secretary to the Gujarat state government headed by Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

Clashes with lawyers

Apart from her rulings, Trivedi was also unpopular due to her frequent clashes with lawyers in her court.

In a high-profile instance last year, she ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation probe against lawyers accused of filing a fake petition in the Supreme Court using a forged authorisation document. Despite appeals from senior bar leaders for leniency, she refused to reconsider.

She has also challenged routine courtroom practices. In October, she declined to record a lawyer’s presence in the court order because he had not made any arguments. This is contrary to standard practice – only some of the lawyers engaged by a litigant argue before court, but the presence of all of them is recorded in orders.

In February, she questioned whether a lawyer could appear on behalf of another, prompting a senior advocate to step in and clarify that such representation is permitted by Supreme Court rules.

In March, she initiated contempt proceedings against two lawyers for allegedly including false statements in a petition. When the filing advocate couldn’t attend virtually due to poor internet access in his village, she ordered his physical presence along with travel tickets to prove his claim that he was not in Delhi. Her refusal to believe the advocate did not sit well with the bar. The contempt order was withdrawn after strong opposition from the bar.

Most recently, in April, she took a tough stand against a lawyer accused of misconduct, rejecting his apology and instead imposing a one lakh rupees fine and a one-month practice ban. Her co-judge on the bench had favoured leniency. During the hearing, Justice Trivedi remarked that she was under pressure from the legal fraternity to go easy on fellow lawyers – pressure she said she would not yield to.

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