The CBI has indicted 3 sitting high court judges and present Uttar Pradesh State Consumer Commission chairperson and the Upa-Lokayukta by naming them in the multi-crore PF scam probe status report submitted to the Supreme Court containing a list of 24 judges accused of misdemeanour. Apart from naming former SC judge,Justice Tarun Chatterjee,the list includes the names of three sitting HC judges Justices Sushil Harkauli and J C S Rawat (both Jharkhand HC) and Justice Tarun Agarwal (Uttarakhand HC) and also those of Justice Bhanwar Singh,who is the chairperson of the consumer commission,and Swatantra Singh,the deputy Lokayukta of UP.
The CBI had said that it did not have enough evidence to launch prosecution against these 24 judges but nonetheless detailed their acts of commission and omission in its report to the Chief Justice of India and the Chief Justice of Allahabad HC for appropriate administrative action. The three sitting HC judges were transferred out of Allahabad and Uttarakhand HCs in the wake of their name figuring in the probe of CBI.Subsequently,the Centre had put on hold the apex court Collegiums recommendation for bringing them back to their parent HCs.On Wednesday,an apex court Bench comprising Justices D K Jain,V S Sirpurkar and G S Singhvi took an adverse view of present district judge of Ghaziabad Vishnuchandra Guptas alleged attempt to interfere with the ongoing trial proceedings in the PF scam before the special CBI judge and issued notice to him asking him to respond within four weeks to the allegations detailed by CBI through Attorney General G E Vahanvati.
Taking note of the AGs apprehensions about a fair trial in the face of allegations of interference by the district judge and involvement of so many past district judges of the Ghaziabad court,the Bench also issued notices to 70 accused in the case asking why the trial be not transferred to another place. What anguished the SC Bench was the audacity of the district judge to call the CBI prosecutor,district government counsel and local police to his chamber on July 26 and ask the latter to take back the CDs of local police in PF scam case from CBI.The case was transferred to CBI by the SC after the UP police expressed its inability to probe a scam of this nature involving so many VIPs.When the CBI prosecutor said that the local police had no role in the case,Gupta then allegedly went on to advise the local police to implead themselves in the case as a party as they had filed the main chargesheet and conduct the trial along with CBI.The Bench said: This is extremely disturbing.We want to get the district judges explanation.The investigation is being done by CBI on the basis of our orders and if he (Gupta) has done what is alleged,then it could construe as an obstruction of justice.
When Guptas counsel A K Srivastava informed the court that the district judge has denied anything of this sort happening in his chamber,the Bench told him to file his affidavit in response to the notice.It was alleged that between 2001 and 2008,the Ghaziabad District Court treasury officer Ashutosh Asthana,who died last year in Dasana Jail,in collusion with district judges,some of whom went on to become HC judges,had siphoned off crores of rupees from the PF accounts of class III and IV employees causing huge loss to the exchequer.
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(source-toi)
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