Hearing a plea by Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami against a case for alleged abetment in an interior designer’s suicide case, the Bombay High Court on Friday orally remarked that the proceedings should not be “proxy kind of a war,” and that parties can look at the case with a “different perspective” as “much water had flown since 2020.”

The Court was informed by the state lawyer that a closure report had been filed in 2018, however, it was reopened later in 2020.

Advocate Niranjan Mundargi for Goswami, however, told the single-judge bench of Justice Milind N Jadhav that the state government reopened the probe on its own to “vendetta” and the “personal animosity of political dispensation in Maharashtra” in 2020.

Goswami had challenged his arrest in connection with the interior designer Anvay Naik suicide case, arguing that while the probe was closed in 2019 through an ‘A summary’ report (closure report where police do not have enough evidence to charge accused) accepted by the Magistrate court, it was reopened after Maharashtra Assembly initiated breach of privilege proceedings against him in 2020.

“The question is whether the state has power to re-open and in what circumstances…You might have to reopen the case but we have to see what extent he dissented. This should not be a proxy kind of a war. We have a very healthy democratic state. There is a voice of dissent. We have four pillars of democracy and that would be the obvious desirable for the proper functioning of the democracy sometimes,” Justice Jadhav orally remarked.

The judge, on the role of the courts further said, “As a court, we do not make laws and we are not elected representatives. So we do not have their power. Neither we are the media who are like a watchdog. We are basically cementing authority between the all three. And we are actually representing polity of the nation.”

When Mundargi urged the court to apply its mind and decide the matter in either party’s favour, the judge orally told the lawyers, “No, there can be a middle way also. Consider the position, since this is case of 2020 and much water has flown. We need to look at this from a very different perspective. Sometimes, in order to do something good, no harm should happen to anybody. Just think over that.” The Court posted further hearing to September 4.