The Supreme Court on Monday issued a notice to the Maharashtra civic authority on a petition seeking initiation of contempt proceedings for demolishing a house and shop in the Sindhudurg district over alleged anti-India slogan raised during the India-Pakistan Champions Trophy match.
Seeking a reply from the Maharashtra authority, a bench of Justice BR Gavai and Justice Augustine George Masih posted the matter for hearing after four weeks.
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The contempt petition has alleged that the demolition of house/shop was done in violation of the Supreme Court’s November 13, 2024, judgment restraining demolition actions across the country without prior notice and affording an opportunity of hearing to the person to be affected by the demolition of his/her property.
VKitabullah Hamidulla Khan – the petitioner – seeking initiation of contempt proceedings, has claimed that the demolition was carried out by the authorities after a frivolous complaint was filed about alleged raising of an anti-India slogan by his 14-year-old son during a cricket match between India and Pakistan in Dubai on February 23, 2025.
Kitabullah Khan, a 40-year-old scrap dealer, said an FIR was registered against his family, his wife, and minor son were taken to a police station in Malvan at midnight and locked up.
The contempt petitioner has stated that though the boy was allowed to go after four to five hours, Khan and his wife remained in police custody for two days till February 25 when they were granted bail by the judicial magistrate.
The magistrate noted in the order that there was nothing on record which prima facie shows the alleged act of the accused person was detrimental to the nation’s integration, the petitioner said.
The petitioner alleged that people were mobilised by the local MLA, and local civic authority was pressured to undertake the demolition exercise, which was done a day after the match on February 24 in the presence of many people.
The authority demolished the petitioner’s tin-shed shop and house on the alleged ground of it being an illegal structure, says the petition.
The action of the civic authorities was arbitrary, illegal and malafide, and done in violation of Supreme Court’s direction issued in 2024, said the petitioner urging the top court to initiate contempt proceedings.
The top court, by its November 13, 2024 judgment, had restrained the concerned authorities across the country from carrying out demolition of residential, commercial and other structures without a prior notice and opportunity of hearing to their owner/occupier.
The bench of Justice B R Gavai and Justice K V Viswanathan, in a judgment on November 13, 2024, ordered, “No demolition should be carried out without a prior show cause notice returnable either in accordance with the time provided by the local municipal laws or within 15 days’ time from the date of service of such notice, whichever is later.”
Issuing a number of directions to curb the arbitrary and high-handed action by the authorities being practiced in certain states, the top court by its November 13, 2024, judgment had said, “… the rule of law provides a framework and value system to ‘rein in the arbitrary exercise of state power and to prevent the abuse of power, to ensure predictability and stability, to make sure that individuals know that their lives, their liberty, their property will not be taken away from them arbitrarily and abusively’.”
Chastising the authorities for resorting to demolition without following the principles of natural justice, the Supreme Court had said, “The chilling sight of a bulldozer demolishing a building, when authorities have failed to follow the basic principles of natural justice and have acted without adhering to the principle of due process, reminds one of a lawless state of affairs, where ‘might was right’.”
