Mumbai: The online trolling and hate campaign against Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud is unending. The latest target of the trolls are CJI Chandrachud’s two foster daughters.
CJI DY Chandrachud has two sons - Abbhinav and Chintan. While Abbhinav is practicing as a lawyer at Bombay High Court, Chintan is a lawyer at Brick Court Chambers, London.
CJI Chandrachud’s first wife Rashmi passed away in 2007. Later he married Kalpana Das. Despite having two sons, they decided to adopt two girls - Mahi and Priyanka who are Special Children or Children with Special Needs (CWSNs). Mahi is now 16 years old whereas Priyanka has completed 20 years.
And how the couple takes care of their adopted daughters is best described by Justice BR Gavai.
“CJI Chandrachud looks after his differently abled adopted daughters better than we look after our own children”, Justice Gavai said at a function organized at Bombay High Court.
But the trolls do not have anything to do with fact. Totally ignoring the realties, they shamelessly used CJI Chandrachud’s foster daughters to target him.
In a tweet, a Twitter user who identifies himself as “sabhapa30724463” and claims to be a retired teacher, has tagged a picture of CJI Chandrachud and his wife enjoying a moment with their foster daughters. Tagging the otherwise a beautiful and heart-touching image, “sabhapa30724463” spewed venom against CJI Chandrachud in these words:
“Jaisa karam karoge, vaisa phal denge Bhagwan… Pehchantu to honge na?” [What you sow is what you reap…. You must ne knowing this man?]
CJI DY Chandrachud has been target of trolls – who also include BJP leaders most of whom are followed by PM Modi, because of some of his judgements that the haters believe are against the ruling Bharitya Janata Party (BJP).
Chandrachud is imparting his duties as Chief Justice of India, and also takes note of the happenings in the country whenever it deemed fit.
The latest example is the viral video from Manipur wherein two tribal women from minority Kuki community are seen being paraded naked and later allegedly gang-raped.
Manipur is witnessing ethnic cleansing since May 3, 2023. But, the state and central governments – both led by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), remained mute spectators. But, the CJI could not remain silent after the viral video surface on the social media.
“Take immediate action. Otherwise, we will”, the CJI said in a stern warning to the government.
Minutes later PM Modi who was maintaining silence as Manipur burnt, spoke calling the incident a matter of “national shame”. Later, Union Home Minister Amit Shah spoke to Manipur Chief Minister that consequently led to arrest of some of the accused seen in the video.
This however did not go down well with the trolls and they re-started a renewed hate campaign against him, this time not sparing even his foster daughters.
Justice DY Chandrachud is facing the wrath of the BJP troll army ever since he became Chief Justice of India in November 2022.
A recent research conducted in collaboration with Sheyril Agarwal and Joyojeet Pal from the University of Michigan showed that a total of 7,53,848 hate messages against CJI Chandrachud were posted on Twitter in less than three months from January 1 to April 20, 2023.
This was when 13 Opposition leaders wrote to President Droupadi Murmu in March 2023 requesting immediate action against the online trolling of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud.
[The writer, Aleem Faizee, is Founder Editor of ummid.com. With inputs from Abhishar Sharma YouTube channel and agencies]
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