Ex-HC judge held for remarks on women
CHENNAI: The central crime branch (CCB) of Chennai Police on Wednesday arrested C S Karnan, a former judge of the Madras and Calcutta high courts, for allegedly making defamatory remarks against women and several judges of the Supreme Court and high courts in online videos.
Karnan has been charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Information Technology (IT) Act and Tamil Nadu (Prohibition of) Harassment of Women Act, a senior CCB official said on condition of anonymity.
The sections invoked include 228 (intentional insult or interruption to public servant sitting in judicial proceedings), 509 (word or gesture intended to i nsult the modesty of any woman) and 153 (provocation with intent to cause riot) and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) under IPC and 67A (publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act, etc., in electronic form) under the IT Act.
A division bench of the Madras high court is hearing the case against Karnan on a petition filed by the Bar Council
of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry who have sought criminal action against t he f ormer judge.
Separately, 10 women lawyers practising at the Madras high court in October wrote to Chief Justice of India SA Bobde, complaining about videos in which Karnan was heard making threats of sexual assault.
“He has not given credence to injunction orders of the court,” said senior lawyer and one of the signatories, Sudha Ramalingam.
“I’m generally for speedy trials and convictions and against arrests from a human rights position but it seems unavoidable here as he doesn’t obey the court and continues to upload abusive videos.”
On Monday, the Madras high court summoned the Chennai city commissioner of police and Tamil Nadu director general of police to be present during a hearing on the Karnan case on December 7.
The court had earlier directed the director-general of police to supervise the investigation and the city commissioner to monitor the probe into the case. During a hearing in November, the state informed the court that they had blocked his videos from YouTube and were taking steps to block more content.
The court had observed that Karnan’s “repeated utterances would undermine the dignity, reputation, honour and majesty of the Institution.”
Karnan is the first serving high court judge to have been found guilty of contempt by the Supreme Court in 2017 for making allegations against other judges.
He served six months in a Kolkata jail and was released in December 2017.
Justice Karnan had previously denied any wrongdoing, saying he was just highlighting the upper caste bias in the higher judiciary of the country.