Kerala District Judge Kalam Pasha, who is at the centre of controversy over forcing renowned Mohiniyattam dancer Dr Neena Prasad to stop performing at an event in Palakkad, on Saturday claimed that he, too, was a “trained dancer and fond of art” and said he had no role in stopping the show.
Days after Judge Kalam Pasha hit the headlines for stopping a Mohinyiattam programme in Kerala’s Palakkad, he wrote a letter to Palakkad Bar Association saying he was “pained by the allegations that he stopped a dance programme using the police due to religious reasons”.
The controversial judge claimed that he had not instructed the police to stop the performance. In the letter, he maintained that one of his employees requested the Palakkad police to reduce the sound from the venue where Dr Prasad was performing.
In his letter, Justice Pasha called himself a connoisseur of arts and said he was trained in Bharatanatyam and Carnatic music.
“I am very fond of art and cultural programmes, and I have studied Carnatic music for six long years, I will not be out of context here to say that I studied Bharatnatyam even up to ‘Arangetram’ (the debut of a classical dancer on stage),” the letter stated.
Pasha also asked the lawyers not to protest at the court premises and said annoying the other public employees with sloganeering is not the right thing to do.
His letter came after lawyers of the Palakkad bar association had protested against Justice Kalam Pasha after he had allegedly asked the organisers to stop Dr Neena Prasad from performing at an event organised at Government Moyan LP School, Palakkad, on Saturday evening.
Judge Kalam Pasha stops Dr Neena Prasad’s show
A controversy had erupted recently after Justice Pasha, who resides near Government Moyan Lower Primary School in Palakkad town, had stopped Dr Neena Prasad’s Mohiniyattam show scheduled to be held around 08:30 PM on Saturday. The judge had claimed that the show was a nuisance to him and forced the organisers to stop the show.
The police had stormed the venue based on the orders of the judge and stopped the hour-long performance titled ‘Sakhyam’. The senior artist and her team were humiliated on the stage and were left in tears.
Following the incident, Dr Prasad had said, “This was the bitterest experience of my dance career. It was a humiliating experience not only for me but also for the fellow artists who mounted the stage with high hopes after more than two years of hibernation”. The noted artist had alleged that it was the high-handedness of a judicial officer. Dr Prasad said she had come to Palakkad after spending hours preparing for the dance choreography.
Meanwhile, the police had said they had no choice but to follow the orders of the judge.
Judge Pasha accused by the wife of Triple Talaq
It is not the first time Judge Pasha has been embroiled in controversies. Last year, Pasha, a senior judge from Pallakad, was accused by his wife of illegally divorcing his wife by issuing “Triple Talaq”.
The wife of B Kalam Pasha, a session court Judge in Kerala’s Palakkad district, had approached the Kerala High Court to register a complaint seeking action against him. In her complaint, the woman said judge Kalam Pasha had issued Triple Talaq against her through a letter on March 1, 2018.
Later, he sent her another letter claiming that there was a typing error in the letter. The letter said that the original date of issuing Triple Talaq was March 1, 2017. The judge’s wife also accused Justice B Kalam Pasha and his brother of threatening her with dire consequences if she refused the divorce. Interestingly, the brother of the accused judge Kalam Pasha is B Kemal Pasha, a retired judge of the High Court of Kerala.
