Bid to defame judges: HC orders ex-SC judge probe

The AP High Court ordered a thorough probe into the reported telephonic conversations between judge (in suspension) S. Ramakrishna and retired High Court judge Justice V. Eswaraiah over the alleged conspiracy to defame judges through baseless allegations.

Justice M. Satyanarayana Murthy and Justice Lalita Kanneganti on Thursday entrusted the responsibility of conducting investigation to former Supreme Court judge Justice R.V. Ravindran and directed the CBI and the central Intelligence to cooperate with him to investigate the voices on the audio tapes allegedly recorded during telephonic conversations.

Earlier, Lakshmi Narasaiah, member of BC, SC, ST and Minorities Students Federation, filed a writ petition in the High Court demanding declaration of the High Court area as a red zone and a thorough enquiry into the death of the HC Registrar Rajasekhar, who is suspected to have succumbed to the Coronavirus.

Recently, suspended district judge Ramakrishna filed an implead petition in the same writ petition alleging that there was a larger conspiracy to malign the reputation of the judges of the HC and SC and that he had sufficient evidence to substantiate his allegations.

Ramakrishna stated that Eswaraiah called him on phone and sought to collect information against the HC and SC judges. He said that he had recorded the conversation and submitted the audio recordings and its English translation to the HC. Ramakrishna claimed that there was conspiracy as some people tried to induce him to take such a malicious decision. He alleged that influential people were propping up Justice Eswaraiah.

After hearing the arguments of counsels for the petitioners, Justice Satyanarayana Murthy and Justice Kanneganti directed Justice Ravindran to probe into the allegations. Justice Ravindran was also asked to find out the veracity of the conversations recorded in a pendrive submitted by judge Ramakrishna. The HC judges said that this was the first-of-its-kind incident to defame justices and hence they are calling for establishing the authenticity of the audio.

The government raised some objections in the implead petition of Ramakrishna for which the court gave seven days of time to file a counter to the petitioner. The next hearing of the petition was after four weeks.