CHANDIGARH
It couldn't get more dramatic than this. Or sordid. A sack full of currency notes, Rs 15 lakh in all,was delivered late in the evening on August 13th, at the home of Justice NirmaljitKaur, a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. Only, the cash landed at the wrong judge's house; it wasapparently meant for Justice Nirmal Yadav (note the similarity in names which led to the mixup in the first place). JusticeNirmaljit Kaur immediately informed the police and the hapless carrier, a clerk working for Sanjeev Bansal, an Additional Advocate General of Haryana was arrested.
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What happened during the next few days has unraveled what is unanimously believed to be the grimy underbelly of our judicial system. " It's a nexus between a lawyer, a judge and a businessman" as the chief public prosecutor Anupam Gupta told a stunned courtroom in Chandigarh this week. The matter has been handed over to the CBI for further investigation, even as the Chief Justice of India, Justice KG Balakrishna has ordered anin-house enquiry by a committee of three judges which includes two sitting Chief Justices.
During interrogation Bansal disclosed that the money was actually meant for Justice Nirmal Yadav a lady judge at the High Court who needed it to buy some land in Solan district of Himachal Pradesh. Bansal also told the police that when the first lot of Rs 15 lakh was confiscated by the police, another Rs 15 lakh was delivered to Nirmal Yadav by a Panchkula based property dealer, Rajeev Gupta the very next day. Records show that she, her brother Ajay Singh Yadav, who happens to be Haryana's irrigation minister and several other family members did indeed buy 11.1 bighas of agricultural land on August 14th. The legal fraternity at the Punjab and Haryana High Court reeled before these sensational disclosures, but there was more to come.
Bansal, who has since lost his job as the AAG, was apparently delivering the money on behalf of Ravinder Singh Bhasin a Delhi hotelier who has managed to evade arrest all these days. He has confessed that he acted as a regular conduit between Ravinder Singh and Justice Yadav and that even earlier he had delivered Rs 5 -6 lakh in cash in addition to sweets and gifts at her house, sent by Singh. Presented with a report by the Chandigarh police which carried these disclosures, the Chief Justice of the High court, Justice Tirath Singh Thakur asked Nirmal Yadav to proceed on leave. Though Justice Yadav denied receiving the money through Bansal, she has since gone on leave.
Investigations into the Solan land deal too have revealed that although it was registered in the name of 18 persons,at least four of them have turned out to be fictitious names while many are the names of children of the judge and her brother. The Chandigarh police's investigation into the phone records of the main players has revealed that Ravinder Singh has been in regular touch with Justice Yadav, her brother Ajay Yadav and another judge fromHaryana. Ravinder, the prime accused, allegedly guilty of "financially inducing a judge" is a powerful fixer with links with senior officers of the Delhi police, judicial officers and several politicians. As for Bansal-- Haryana's disgraced AAG -- he was apparently investing unaccountable money of prominent bureaucrats and legal big wigs in properties. The police recovered documents of properties worth crores owned by some of these people from his house.
Some would say that handing over of such a 'messy' business to the CBI is the right thing to do as the agency is well equipped to investigate cases with such widespread ramifications. But why then, is there all around disappointment at the haste with which the Chandigarhpolice, the Punjab governor and UT Administrator Gen SF Rodrigues and CJI Thakur have washed their hands off the matter? "The high voltage publicity which the case generated has rattled the powerful accused. Pushing it over to the CBI is a step backward because it will effectively delay the pace of investigations and provide the much needed breather to the accused," says a senior lawyer connected with the case. Others feel that given the CBI's record in investigating sensitive cases, it is unlikely to come out with a report in the near future, more so since no time frame has been fixed for it.
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Indeed, Chief Public Prosecutor, Anupam Gupta during the hearings for police remand for Bansal too had expressed apprehensions when he told the courtthat "there is tremendous pressure from both within and outside the legal system on the investigating agency. It is up against a very powerful, intelligent and well connected nexus that involves higher members of the judiciary." Is that why in the FIR registered by the CBI, no judge has been named?
Though the Chandigarh police did a commendable job in extracting vital information out of Bansal, eventually the case became too hot a potato for it. In his status report presented to Governor Rodrigues and CJ Thakur, Senior Superintendent of Police Chandigarh, SS Srivastava states, "Some judges elevated to higher courts have been practicing as advocates in Chandigarh and the UT police officials have been interacting with some of them. In such a situation the action of the police will always remain under scanner and despite working in a bonafide manner, motives with be attributed to all its actions." It is reliably learnt that this report formed the basis for handing the case to the CBI.
As the sensational case unfolded in the Chandigarh district courts, the actions of another senior High Court judge, Justice KS Garewal, was objected to by the public prosecutor Gupta. Just as arguments in the remand hearing on august 26th had concluded and the magistrate had reserved pronouncement of orders, Justice Garewal landed in the lower courts, prompting a furious Gupta to say:"As the magistrate is under the disciplinary control of the High Court, Justice Garewal's visit is a grave breach of judicial propriety and impacts tangibly on the judicial independence of the magistrate." If the prosecution was feeling the pressure from several quarters, the district bar added its mite in intimidating it. Gupta and his associates were severely heckled and booed by lawyers, supportive of Bansal. In fact the first day that Bansal was produced in court, as many as 30 odd lawyers stood up to defend him.
With the matter now in the hands of the CBI, quiet has been restored to Chandigarh's courts. Justice Nirmal Yadav who has claimed innocence, does not attend court. Perhaps the Chief Justice will wait for the report of thein-house committee before taking any further action? The last word though, is yet to be heard on this controversial issue. The investigators in the Chandigarh police believe that what they have uncovered so far, is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. If the past records of the Punjab and Haryana High Court are anything to go by, there is little hope for optimism.
Cases of judicial impropriety surface with disquieting regularity at this High Court. Justice V Ramaswamy who was almost impeached in 1993, was a judge here before he was elevated to the Supreme Court. In 2002 Justice Arun B Saharaya stripped three judges of the High Court of work for their alleged role in the jobs scandal involving Punjab Public Service Commission chief Ravi Sidhu. One of them later took premature retirement. In April 2004, as many as 25 judges of the High Court went on mass leave in protest against the then Chief Justice BK Roy who had issued show cause notices to two judges for having taken membership of a controversial resort, the Forest Hill Country Club and Resort.And now, this!
