New Delhi: Chief Justice of India Surya Kant has met the Indian high commissioner to the United Kingdom and raised the threats and attacks being faced by retired Bombay high court judge Justice Gautam S. Patel. He has reportedly been assured that "adequate security arrangements" have been made.

“I had a discussion with the high commissioner, who assured that no harm would come to him or his family and that adequate security arrangements have been made by the London police," the CJI told The Times of India.

As The Wire has reported, Justice Gautam S. Patel, who retired from the Bombay high court in April 2024, and his family have been threatened and physically attacked on at least five occasions – four in London and one in Mumbai – in connection with a judgment he delivered deciding a succession matter in the Dawoodi Bohra community.

The threats and attacks have been claimed by a “powerful guild of DB community members”, and began more than a year after the judgment was delivered. The group has said it wants Justice Patel to release a Youtube video in which he recants the judgment – something the judge calls “inconceivable”. “How do you recant a judgment? This is not a thing known in law,” he told The Wire. Since then, his daughter and wife have received threat letters, his daughter’s home has been broken into, and she has been physically attacked on the street in London and had her nose broken.

Justice Patel went public with his threats after the most recent threat letter, received at his daughter's London home on June 5, contained a death threat for the entire family. He also wrote to the CJI and the Acting Chief Justice of the Bombay high court about the threats and attacks, as he felt the situation casts a cloud on the entire legal fraternity. “How can the hundreds of judges across high courts work with this kind of fear and intimidation?” he told The Wire.

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