Supreme Court: A 3-judge bench of Arun Mishra, RF Nariman and Deepak Gupta, JJ has sought response from advocate Utsav Bains, who claimed that there is a conspiracy to frame up the Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi in a sexual harassment case. The Court has posted the matter for hearing tomorrow and has sought Utsav Bains’s presence before it.
The bench was hearing a case relating to the sexual harassment allegations against CJI Gogoi. The charges have been leveled by a dismissed
woman employee of the Supreme Court.
Advocate Utsav Bains on Monday filed an affidavit saying there was a larger ‘conspiracy’ playing out to compel the CJI to resign. He claimed that when he refused to take up the case on finding several loopholes in her story, the person offered him Rs 50 lakh, which was raised to Rs 1.50 crore. Bains further claimed that on inquiry, he found that “certain fixers”, who claim to be engaged in illegally managing judgments in exchange for cash, were behind the plot as the Chief Justice had taken decisive action to crack down on such fixers.
“The said fixer Romesh Sharma was running a ‘cash for judgment’ racket in cahoots with businessmen and politicians and had exercised considerable influence for years, which ultimately was brought to an end by the present CJI, as he took decisive action against them after becoming CJI.”
He further claimed,
“There was a conspiracy against the Chief Justice of India to force him to resign and thereby threaten every judge with dire consequences for being free and fearless in dispensing justice while pronouncing judgments against the rich and powerful in the country.”
On Saturday, a Special bench met for a sitting to discuss online media reports of sexual harassment allegations against CJI Ranjan Gogoi. The bench said,
“The independence of the judiciary is under very serious threat and there is a larger conspiracy to destabilise the judiciary,”
The hurriedly constituted 3-judge special bench headed by CJI Ranjan Gogoi, in the case related to allegations of sexual harassment against the CJI, was reduced to a 2-judge bench when CJI left it to justices Arun Mishra and Sanjiv Khanna to take a call on the issue of passing judicial order.
As the hearing progressed, the CJI opted out midway from passing any judicial order and said,
“I am not going to be a part of the judicial order. Justice Arun Mishra is the senior most judge available in Delhi and he will dictate the order,”
The bench, however, did not pass any judicial order and left it to the wisdom of the media to decide on the publication of reports in order to protect the independence of the judiciary.
(Source: ANI)