Anita Gets Bail by Arun Shourie

Author:Arun Shourie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2018-05-30T04:00:00+00:00

8

What if he had not written that letter?

On 23 January 2017, a sitting judge of the Calcutta High Court, Justice C.S. Karnan, shot off a letter to the prime minister. He named twenty judges—starting with the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court—as being corrupt. He told the prime minister that this was ‘an initial list’, and that the corruption of the judges ‘can be proved through some competent agencies’. He furnished no evidence to substantiate his allegation.

On 25 January, he shot off another letter—this time to the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, whose name, like Abu Ben Adam’s, had led all the rest in the list that Karnan had sent to the prime minister. The reason Karnan was writing to him, it seems, was that in his mind the Chief Justice, Madras High Court, was the origin of his troubles. Karnan recalled that having been called by them, on 16 February 2016, he had met the Chief Justice of India and other members of the Collegium in the chambers of the Chief Justice. The Chief Justice had told him that there were many complaints against his conduct on the bench; he narrated how he had then fallen at the feet of the Chief Justice and entreated him to institute an inquiry into the allegations. He recalled that his troubles had started when, sitting alongside a senior judge, he had objected to a case being taken up that had not been listed; he recalled how he had later taken the case bundle to the senior judge and touched his feet. ‘Thereafter,’ he continued in his letter to the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, ‘Mr. Justice Ibrahim Kalifulla and most of the other Judges started their continuous ragging of myself.’ He recalled that the Chief Justice, Madras, had maintained that no such case had been taken up, and that ‘Now the collected documents have been misplaced somewhere…’

He recounted another instance. ‘On one occasion you and Mr. Justice Akbar Ali came up to me at the second floor of the Additional Block of the High Court wherein High Tea was provided for the small function at the meeting hall, during the social function you and Mr. Justice Akbar Ali barged in front of my seat and indecently confronted me with wicked postures and gestures, which is the lowest form of indecency exhibited from respected gentlemen like both of you especially from the fraternity of Judges…’

He recounted that in his meeting with the Chief Justice and other Collegium judges, he had requested the Chief Justice to cancel the order by which he had stopped all judicial and administrative work from being assigned to him. He concluded his letter to the Chief Justice, Madras, by maintaining, ‘Now it is pertinent to ask—who is the culprit? It has to be decided. My view is that you wantonly, deliberately and continuously insulted me. Therefore, you should be prosecuted under the SC/ST [Prevention of] Atrocities Act.’

On 8 February 2017, the Supreme Court issued

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.