Is­rael B. Ra­jah-Khan, SC, LLD (hon­oris causa)

I do not wish to com­ment on the ac­tu­al al­leged vi­o­lent ut­ter­ances made by Star Sab­ga be­cause they are high­ly sen­sa­tion­al, of­fen­sive/dis­re­spect­ful (coolie) and, most of all, would be sub­ject to in­ter­pre­ta­tion by the court in the pend­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al and ju­di­cial re­view pro­ceed­ings against the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and oth­ers: It is sub ju­dice.

But it ap­pears that promi­nent cit­i­zens and a host of oth­ers are in a furore over the taped record­ing of the con­ver­sa­tion be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed for pub­lic hear­ing. And in­ci­den­tal­ly, both the Sun­day Guardian and Sun­day Ex­press of Ju­ly 26th ful­ly pub­lished same.

It is of in­ter­est to note that the court mat­ter must be con­duct­ed open­ly and not se­cret­ly. The pub­lic and the me­dia will have ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion and/or ev­i­dence that will con­sti­tute the hear­ing.

Thus, the rev­e­la­tion of the con­tents of the Sab­ga-Hadeed pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion in this mat­ter is re­al­ly of NO mo­ment – it was ‘bong’ to come out in the open as a re­sult of the court pro­ceed­ings.

But I, my­self, am very cu­ri­ous as to how the sen­sa­tion­al ut­ter­ances of Sab­ga were dis­closed to the pub­lic be­fore the ac­tu­al court hear­ing in the sub­stan­tive mat­ter.

But it would be a waste of time, en­er­gy and mon­ey to en­gage a Com­mis­sion of In­quiry in or­der to as­cer­tain who was/were the cul­prit(s) in dis­clos­ing same, bear­ing in mind that it could have em­anat­ed from any and many per­sons, in­clud­ing court per­son­nel. Per­haps dis­ci­pli­nary charges could be in­sti­tut­ed against any pub­lic ser­vant (in­clud­ing po­lice of­fi­cers) if any is/are in­volved.

I wish to place on the pub­lic record that I dep­re­cate the dis­clo­sure of the con­tents of the al­leged Sab­ga-Hadeed con­ver­sa­tion be­fore it was re­vealed at the court’s hear­ing. But in the fi­nal analy­sis, it would not af­fect the out­come of the case and jus­tice would pre­vail.

And in­ci­den­tal­ly, the fun­da­men­tal right of the me­dia and free­dom of the cit­i­zens are vi­brant­ly be­ing ex­er­cised in all this bac­cha­nal: due process of the law is tak­ing place in our lib­er­al de­mo­c­ra­t­ic state.