~By Sujit Bhar
This is possibly getting a bit out of hand. Justice CS Karnan is at it again, in his own bizarre way. And the general feeling within the legal fraternity is that the Supreme Court and the bench headed by the Chief Justice of India JS Khehar must now take strict action, probably even before the March 31 deadline (to appear before the bench) it has given to the judge.
On March 16, the strictly censured judge of the Calcutta High Court wrote a letter, addressed to all members of the seven-judge bench of the Supreme Court, with some strange allegations. The letter also demanded “compensation” of Rs 14 crore to himself, for causing mental disturbance.
The judge has been in the news for a while, and whatever action the Supreme Court has tried to take, he has always had a weird take on that.
On Friday afternoon, at his official Kolkata residence, the Director General of Police, West Bengal, arrived, with a posse of 100 policemen, and handed over the bailable warrant. It was learnt that the judge asked them for the chargesheet.
Karnan has been asked to appear before the seven-judge Supreme Court bench on March 31, failing which, there could be a non-bailable arrest warrant issued against him.
The key parts of Justice Karnan’s letter, written on a pad which did not look like an official letterhead (the details have been impressed by rubber stamps, not printed – see picture) read as follows:
Addressed to:
The Chief Justice of India and Justices Dipak Misra, J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B Lokur, Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Kurian Joseph.
(They constitute the seven-judge bench of the Supreme Court.)
“My lords, you have constituted an unconstitutional bench after breaking the Indian Constitutional Law and passed a suo-moto contempt order against me in suo-moto contempt petition No. 1 of 2017 wherein you have restrained my judicial administrative work, the said order has been passed with malafide intention in order to harass a Dalit judge (myself).”
Justice Karnan admits to have levelled a complaint (dated 23.1.2017) against “20 judges for dishonesty” and that the letter had been sent to the Prime Minister. He has again urged that the suo motu contempt order was to “protect the corrupt judges”.
He also complains that the “Hon’ble seven judges have prevented me in carrying out my judicial and administrative work from 8.2.2017 until now. Therefore I am calling up on the seven Judges to pay compensation, a sum of Rs 14 crores… as compensation since you have disturbed my mind and my normal life, besides you have insulted me in the general public of a population of 120 crores in India due to a lack of legal knowledge. Now all seven Judges shall pay a part of the compensation within a period of 7 days from the date of receipt of this order, failing which on the same stand of yours (same footing), I will restrain judicial and administrative work of yours.”
As far as Justice Karnan is concerned, nothing is a certainty.
A copy of the letter below:
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