NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday expressed concern over the institution being “systematically attacked” and judges being “maligned” and “blackmailed” ahead of big cases involving “influential” people, and asked former SC judge
AK Patnaik to examine allegations of a “larger conspiracy” by vested interests behind a
sexual harassment charge against Chief Justice of India (
CJI)
Ranjan Gogoi.
A young Punjab-based lawyer, Utsav Bains had alleged that harassment charges have been levelled against the CJI as part of a “larger conspiracy” hatched by a large corporate house in connivance with a sacked court staff in a bid to fix benches and verdicts in the top court.
The harassment charge levelled by a former junior court assistant who was dismissed from service in December is being examined separately by a three-member in-house panel headed by Justice SA Bobde, the No. 2 judge in Supreme Court. That is an administrative probe. The “larger conspiracy” angle is being probed on the judicial side by a bench of Justices Arun Mishra, R F Nariman and Deepak Gupta.
Justice Patnaik will get all assistance from chiefs of central agencies CBI and IB as well as the Delhi police commissioner to complete his probe, the bench led by Justice Mishra said in a short order delivered in the afternoon.
It did not set any deadline within which this probe must be completed. The case will now come up after the probe report is submitted.
The bench said the level of “blackmail” that judges were subjected to in important matters was such that anyone can be “maligned” or “killed” if need be.
“The way this institution is being systematically attacked in the last three to four years it will not last,” the order said. “Letters are written ahead of big cases. People try to run the registry by money power. Anyone acting against this will be killed or maligned; it has come to that level of blackmail. These charges (of bench hunting and fixing) have been hovering in the air for years,” it said.
“But the Supreme Court cannot be run by a remote by those with money or muscle power,” Justice Misra said. “Three to four per cent of the lawyers are giving the institution a bad name. It is time to tell the rich and the powerful that you cannot run the Supreme Court.”
Justice Misra had on Wednesday said the court would get into the bottom of these things if they were happening, and put a stop to it, and sought the help of the investigative agencies to verify whether the conspiracy claims of lawyer Bains were true.
Bains had claimed that a fixer had approached him with a very lucrative offer to “frame” the CJI. He had adduced CCTV footage and phone communications to back his claim. All these will now be investigated.
On Thursday, the bench directed Bains to reveal all information he had regarding the larger conspiracy. He cannot claim any privilege over anything, the bench said.