‘2 years have elapsed’: SC closes ex-CJI case
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday closed the proceedings initiated to probe a “larger conspiracy” behind allegations of sexual harassment leveled against former chief justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi and “fixing” of benches at the top court.
A report filed by the one-man committee headed by former top court judge justice AK Patnaik that was set up to examine the veracity of allegations of conspiracy leveled by a lawyer Utsav Bains, was submitted to the court.
After going through the report, a three-judge bench headed by justice SK Kaul on Thursday said, “The report acknowledges the existence of conspiracy cannot be ruled out.”
However, in view of the limited mandate given to the committee set up only to go into allegations made by Bains and not the merits of sexual harassment charges against Gogoi, the committee felt constrained to proceed further. Also, this exercise would require collection of electronic evidence in form of conversations on WhatsApp and Telegram.
As two years have elapsed and recovery of this electronic evidence would be difficult, the bench, also comprising justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian, said, “No purpose will
be served in continuing the proceedings. Accordingly the suo moto proceedings are closed.”
The court said the in-house probe has been completed and the three-member panel headed by justice SA Bobde, the current CJI, has already given the report exonerating the former CJI.
The Justice Patnaik Committee recorded in its report that the Director Intelligence Bureau was of the view that the then CJI Gogoi, having taken several tough decisions relating to the National Register of Citizens (NRC), there was “strong reasons to believe that such judgments may have acted as trigger to make such allegations (of sexual harassment) against then CJI”.
Justice Patnaik in his report also said that some tough administrative decisions taken by Gogoi to streamline the registry of the Supreme Court could also have acted as the trigger.
However, in view of limited mandate given to the committee, the three-judge bench said “the report opines that it cannot really inquire whether decision of CJI on judicial side in sensitive matters triggered off the conspiracy against the then CJI as remit of the committee was only to inquire allegations made by Utsav Bains”.
The suo motu proceedings were initiated by a bench headed by former top court judge justice Arun Mishra on April 25, 2019, to look into lawyer Utsav Bains allegations of a conspiracy to malign the former CJI hatched by persons in collusion with two dismissed employees of SC registry. The court, while appointing former apex court judge justice Patnaik to hold an inquiry into the allegations of Bains, made it clear that inquiry by justice Patnaik shall not be with respect to the “alleged misbehavior” involving the CJI, against whom allegations of sexual allegations have been levelled by a former top court employee. It had said that the outcome of inquiry by justice Patnaik “shall not affect the in-house procedure/inquiry which is pending on the administrative side”.
Bains had filed an affidavit following the unprecedented hearing in the court during which justice Gogoi had said some “bigger force” was behind the sexual harassment allegations as they wanted to “deactivate” the CJI’s office. The hearing on April 20 in the case was held after stories were published on some news portals about sexual harassment allegations levelled by a former employee of the apex court against the CJI.
Following the hearing on Thursday, the court ordered the report submitted by justice Patnaik to be placed in a sealed cover.