‘Bad guys won’t win’: Former Bombay High Court judge Gautam Patel on attack, threats

In April 2024, Justice Gautam Patel retired from the Bombay High Court. One of his final, most high-profile decisions on the bench was delivering the landmark verdict on the decade-long Dawoodi Bohra succession dispute, upholding Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin as the community’s rightful spiritual head.

However, the verdict has turned into a harrowing, transnational nightmare for the retired judge and his family. For nearly 10 months, they have been the targets of an intimidation campaign stretching from Mumbai to London. The demands are unprecedented: an anonymous criminal syndicate is attempting to force the retired judge to leave India and publicly recant his judicial record via a recorded YouTube video. The intimidation turned brutal when his daughter, Aditi, was ambushed and assaulted on April 22 outside her home in a London suburb.

In an exclusive conversation with The Indian Express, Justice Patel speaks about the family’s defiance and the psychological toll of a cross-border criminal campaign, the “cowardice” of targeting a judge’s children, and why he and his family refuse to cower or let the “bad guys” win.

Edited excerpts:

You were doubtful of returning to India in the foreseeable future. How is the family coping with the threats?

Justice Gautam Patel: I’m back in Bombay. No question about that. We have to get on with our lives. We are taking the necessary precautions and being careful. But we are absolutely not going to allow them to alter the tempo or tenor of our lives or to dictate to us what we can and can’t do, where we should work, how we should live, and where we should travel. That’s not happening. We will continue, and we will not succumb to these threats. The family and I are completely together on this.

One of the threatening letters demanded that you leave India and create a YouTube video recanting your 2024 judgment that decided the spiritual head of the Dawoodi Bohra community. In your decades of experience, have you ever encountered a criminal campaign of this sort?

Justice Gautam Patel: Never heard of it, and it is absolutely unthinkable. It is something unknown to law. It’s entirely outside the realm of law. In fact, the demand is to commit an illegality. Let’s be very clear about it. Not only is the demand in itself illegal, but it asks that I make a false allegation against one of the parties to the dispute.

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I’m essentially being asked to fabricate a statement, which I refuse to do. And I will look at it a different way. They have an allegation against me. They don’t want to prove it. Talk is cheap. Instead of proving it, they are trying to browbeat not just me, but browbeat me by browbeating my family and actually attacking my family, which has nothing to do with any of this, into committing a rank illegality.

How can that be contemplated? There’s the judgment. I rendered it after thought and after due deliberation. The appeal court will decide whether I was right or wrong. It’s really that simple. Whatever has to be argued has to be argued in appeal.

While the judgment was delivered in Mumbai, when you were a judge at the Bombay High Court, the physical violence against your daughter took place in the UK.

Justice Gautam Patel: That is the diabolical part. That’s the level of, I don’t know what the word for it is… The level of cowardice perhaps, because a year and a half on, nobody dares attack me. Instead, they go after my children, they go after my daughter who is overseas and who is not here. What does that tell you about the people who are behind this?

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How frustrating has it been to balance this coordination among cross-border investigation agencies, like the Mumbai police and the Hertfordshire Constabulary in the UK?

Justice Gautam Patel: It is time-consuming. They have not been obstructive. None of them has been obstructive. All of them have been receptive, courteous and very cooperative. They are trying to help. But they are operating within the framework of the law. But the people who threaten me are completely outside the framework of the law. They are a law unto themselves, making these ridiculous and absurd demands.

What happened on April 22, 2026?

Justice Gautam Patel: She did her school run, Aditi, and she was on her way back. I think she was texting on her phone or whatever, and this man yanked her hair from behind, and when she turned around, he punched her repeatedly in the face, resulting ultimately in a fractured nose.

He was wearing a body cam, obviously, so when she fell to the ground and was screaming, and he kicked her, and by then the neighbours came, and he hesitated a little longer just to get more footage, and then ran away.

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Of course, he carefully chose the spot because it is in one of those few blind spots in that Greater London area. That was a carefully premeditated and orchestrated attack.

How is your daughter coping with the trauma?

Justice Gautam Patel: With remarkable strength. She is an astonishingly brave young lady. She is not going to give in to this either. She sees the injustice in it, and she has always been willing to fight and speak up against injustice. I’m very proud of her. She doesn’t belong to the legal world. She’s completely out of it. She hadn’t even read the judgment or all this stuff. And why should she?

As a father and husband, how do you cope with the psychological burden of knowing that a decision you penned in a courtroom has translated into a direct physical threat to your children and your grandchildren?

Justice Gautam Patel: It is very difficult. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I wouldn’t wish it on any father anywhere. But my wife and I have been able to derive strength from our children’s strength. When they say, ‘we are not going to stand for this’, it gives us courage as well. And they have stood firm right through it, but it has been horrendous.

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The letters claim that it is from the people of the Dawoodi Bohra community. The first letter in September did two or three things. It identified the persons behind the letter as a powerful guild of Dawoodi Bohra community members. And though that’s not a community which is known for violence, but for advocating peace, education and so on, it then said that they have engaged a dangerous criminal syndicate.

The second letter of June, after Aditi was attacked, referred to the first letter and said the contract has been fully paid, and the attack on her is the consequence of my not complying with the demand. And the next step involves the cremation of my family and I. So that’s a clear-cut death threat. There is no other word, no other way to describe it.

An official statement from the spiritual head of the Dawoodi Bohras condemns the attack, calls it entirely contrary to their values, and urges the community to cooperate with the police. Do you believe it will have any practical impact?

Justice Gautam Patel: I don’t know. I don’t want to speculate, and I just do not know.

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Justice Gautam Patel says he has received much support from the judiciary. The issue has evolved from an attack against an individual to a symbol of something much larger. (Express Photo by Ganesh Shirsekar)

The incident exposes a critical flaw in how we protect retired judges. Do you think any specific institutional mechanisms should be implemented to safeguard retired judges, either by the Supreme Court or the Centre?

Justice Gautam Patel: I’m sure that at the highest levels, this must be under active consideration because we have a large body of judges and various kinds of judgments are required to be delivered. People have to be willing to take judgeships and judges must be able to do their job without this nagging fear at the back of their mind that what would happen three years later after I have retired, long gone from the scene, somebody will come after me. That can’t be allowed to happen. Now, what form that should take, I don’t know. But I presume that there is some thinking around those lines.

Are you receiving any support from former or present judges?

Justice Gautam Patel: There has been overwhelming, unanimous support from several sitting judges at the highest levels, almost at every level. From the district judges, from other judges at the highest levels. They have all come out unequivocally in support and in condemnation of these attacks. It has now moved to being an attack not just on me as an individual in regard to one judgment, but that is now, in one sense, a symbol or an emblem of something much larger.

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This is now being seen as a threat to the judicial system itself. That is where it has now reached.

Can an incident like this instil fear among judges?

Justice Gautam Patel: I sincerely hope not. On the contrary, I sincerely hope that if you look at the whole of the incident, and everything that has happened, I hope it gives judges courage and perhaps even some anger. It would be nice to say that they’re not going to let this happen on our watch. I think that’s necessary.

Investigating agencies play a crucial role in such matters. What is the expectation from the Mumbai police and the Hertfordshire Constabulary?

Justice Gautam Patel: I’m assuming that, given time and enough resources, they are going to be able to identify who is actually behind it. We know what has happened. The why and the who are yet to be determined. That’s what the investigative agencies will do, and that’s what we are relying upon now. What else can we do? How else do you get closure on things?

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Till that happens, what safety measures will you and your family be taking?

Justice Gautam Patel: We are being careful, but we are carrying on with our lives. We are not going to let these people browbeat us into a state of submission and into living our lives cowering in fear in dark corners. That is not going to happen at all. Because if you give in, even marginally, then the bad guy is winning, and the bad guys are not allowed to win.

Do you have an appeal to make to the authorities concerned?

Justice Gautam Patel: No, I’m not making an appeal to the authorities concerned. I’m sure that they’re all equally concerned about it, and they are doing their job to the best of their abilities, perhaps over and beyond that. I would just like to believe that every single authority believes and every single citizen who has come forward in support also believes that this is not something that should be tolerated in the larger interests of the society that we live in. Otherwise, this way just lies in chaos.