A Division Bench of the Madras High Court on Thursday smelled a rat over “irregular and mysterious” listing of cases, related to sexual harassment charges levelled against a top official of the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti Corruption (DVAC), before another Division Bench of the court between September 10 and October 5 last year.
The Bench of Justices Vineet Kothari and Anita Sumanth could not comprehend how its predecessor Bench entertained one of those cases even before it was numbered by the Registry and passed interim orders staying an internal inquiry ordered by the Director General of Police (DGP) besides imposing a gag on reporting the issue in the media.
The judges pointed out that the writ petition filed by the DVAC official was actually returned by the High Court Registry in September last on the ground that the petitioner, being an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, should ideally approach the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) first and not the High Court by way of a writ petition. However, the petitioner’s counsel on record represented with an explanation that the list was not related to any service matter and that he was aggrieved only against the proceedings of an Internal Complaints Committee constituted under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act of 2013.
Pursuant to the explanation, the unnumbered case was listed before the previous Division Bench on September 10, 2018 for deciding its maintainability. Curiously, without deciding the maintainability of the case, that Bench passed a slew of interim orders in the case and also tagged along with it other writ petitions filed by the victim woman before a single judge.
‘Irregular procedure’
Justice Sumanth, in her judgment, said: “The procedure followed, in regard to listing of cases and obtaining of interim orders at S.R. stage (unnumbered stage), appears mysterious, to say the least, apart from being irregular. The maintainability of the matter has thus not been adjudicated upon at all.” The judgment held that the writ petitions filed should be detagged and transferred back to the single judge holding the service portfolio after obtaining necessary orders from the Chief Justice.
Similarly, the petition filed by the accused official should also be placed before the Chief Justice to decide its listing, the Bench added. The victim had insisted upon the transfer of the accused since she apprehended that he might destroy the evidence.