MUMBAI: A lawyer whose clients describe him as “the father I never had;” a judge whose brief tenure is still remembered by both staff and lawyers; a self-effacing fighter for human rights — A S Uraizee, who passed away this week aged 91, was all of these, and more; he was among the last of the rare breed of Muslim Gandhians.
As a lawyer, he took on the most powerful figure in his community—Maulana Ziauddin Bukhari, who was known as then chief minister Sharad Pawar’s right-hand man—and won. As a PUCL (Peoples Union for Civil Liberties) member, Uraizee stood up for the two Sikh professors arrested from Mumbai after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, and charged, along with then CRPF officer SS Mann, with conspiring to kill her. It was a false case that was dropped years later by Rajiv Gandhi’s government. The fight was for those homebuyers who found that the flats they had booked in Bukhari’s housing scheme, meant for lower middle class Muslims, had been sold to multiple buyers. Some of those fighting under Uraizee Saab’s leadership received threats and more, but nobody dared threaten the incorruptible lawyer. Such was his standing that even though his progressive views and critique of his own community were well-known, he remained a respected figure in the predominantly Muslim area of Nagpada. The one-room flat in a crumbling building, where the balcony doubled up as the kitchen, remained his home all through the nine months that he worked as a judge. Leave aside the promised government accommodation, he was not even reimbursed for the petrol used for travelling to court in his moped.
