CBI to examine sitting High Court Judges – CJI grants permission
The rot has set in and is openly acknowledged
Be you never so high, yet the law is above you
The Chief Justice of India has permitted the CBI to examine the two judges of the Punjab and Haryana High Court involved in the cash scam.
This is what DDT reported on this case,
On 13 th August, Additional Advocate General Sandeep Bansal , through his munshi Prakash Chand delivered a packet containing Rs 15 lakhs in cash to the residence of Justice Nirmaljit Kaur , a Punjab and Haryana High Court judge. She called the police. Bansal was arrested by the police. He resigned from the position of AG immediately and apparently told the police that the money was wrongly delivered to Justice Kaur's residence and that it was actually meant for Justice Nirmal Yadav. He claimed that he had sent his munshi with the currency notes because the money was needed for a land deal made by the judge in Solan in Himachal Pradesh.
It seems another sum of Rs. 15 lakhs was delivered at Justice Yadav's home the next day by Bansal's friend and property dealer Rajiv Gupta.Justice Nirmal Yadav was a Judicial Member of the ITAT and was posted in Mumbai for about 2 years before her elevation on 05.11.2004.
Delivering slush cash to the wrong person can have serious consequences.
Another scam involving more than 30 judges are waiting to explode. The fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 23 crore from the PF deposits of class IV employees of the courts in Ghaziabad by the central nazir or the treasury officer, Ashutosh Asthana . The treasury officer took out the money by forging applications of employees which were approved by the district judges concerned many of whom have since been elevated to High Courts and the Supreme Court.
According to reports, all the costly items (split ACs , refrigerators and mobile phones) which are mentioned in the bills, were given to then district judges, additional district judges etc, who have been elevated presently as judges in the Supreme Court and various HCs.
As stated by a Bench, “it is time to stem the rot that seems to have crept into the judicial system. The time has come because people have started categorising some judges as very honest despite it being the foremost qualification of any judge. It is the system. We have to find the mechanism to stem the rot”
Judges, after all, are not above the LAW! A very senior editor who had been running a crusade against some judges and their questionable judgements was accused of tarnishing the image of the Court. He retorted, “Is it the exclusive prerogative of the judges to tarnish the image of the Court?”