From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: A lawyer, Jaya Sukin, has applied to Attorney General K K Venugopal, seeking permission to initiate criminal contempt proceedings against retired Delhi High Court judge S N Dhingra and two senior advocates Aman Lekhi and Rama Kumar for making scathing remarks by Justices Surya Kant and Jamshed B Pardiwala over the last week’s beheading of Hindu tailor Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur.
He has sought consent to initiate criminal contempt proceedings for the statements on the Supreme Court’s oral observations in the case of suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma while rejecting her plea to club all FIR against her in a single court.
The lawyer claimed the remarks of Justice Dhingra and the two senior advocates caused “irreperable injuries” to the Indian judiciary and the nation. He contended tht the use of derogatory language against the judiciary fell within the scope of the contempt of courts.
The letter refers to Justice Dhingra’s statement on the observations of #SupremeCourt in #NupurSharma’s in an interview to India TV on July 2, 2022 and Senior Advocates Aman Lekhi and Rama Kumar statements in a legal news portal called Verdictum on July 1, 2022.
In a recent interaction with a news channel, retired justice SN Dhingra said that if a judge wants to deliver a speech, then, he should become a politician. SN Dhingra also asked why the Supreme Court did not include its oral comments in the written order.
“If the Supreme Court had guts, it would have given those comments as a part of the written order. The Supreme Court has only written in the order that the petition is dismissed as withdrawn. Why?” he had asked.
SN Dhingra further said, “This gives a terrible message in the country that the Supreme Court itself is high on power and nobody can stop the Supreme Court from saying anything at its own will.”
The development comes days after Trinamool Congress spokesperson Saket Gokhale had sought consent from AG to falsely implicate Opindia and its Editor-in-Chief Nupur Sharma for questioning the contentious remarks of the two judges. OpIndia, in an article, had stated that the statement of the judges has emboldened the Islamists.
The two judges last week held Nupur Sharma “single-handedly responsible” for the Udaipur killing by the Islamists for a mere social media post. They asked her to apologise to the entire nation on TV.
The statements, however, did not make it to the official order that refused to grant Nupur Sharma permission to club all FIRs against her to Delhi.
JUDGES QUESTIONED: Meanwhile, a group consisting of 15 retired judges of various high courts, 77 retired bureaucrats and 25 retired armed forces officers have issued an open statement saying that ‘unfortunate and unprecedented comments’ were made by a two-judge bench.
The statement said the observations, simultaneously relayed by all news channels in high decibel, are not in sync with judicial ethos and by no stretch these observations, which are not part of the judicial order, can be sanctified on the plank of judicial propriety and fairness.
“Such outrageous transgressions are without parallel in the annals of judiciary. Nupur Sharma sought access to the justice system before the highest court as that court alone could consider grant of relief being sought. The observations that have no connect jurisprudentially with the issue raised in the petition, transgressed in an unprecedented manner all canons of dispensation of justice,” said the statement.
The coordinators of the statement are Justice P.N. Ravindran former judge of Kerala High Court, and Anand Bose, former chief secretary, Kerala. It said: “Such an approach of the Supreme Court deserves no applause and impacts the very sanctity and honour of the highest court of land”.
