Supreme Court: Plea Move Seeking FIR Against Justice Yashwant Varma Challenging In-House Probe By Committee Constituted By CJI

The Supreme Court in the case of Shri Mathews J. Ne-impara And Ors. Versus the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India And Ors. wherein a Public Interest Litigation, PIL is filed seeking to register an FIR against Justice Varma and challenging the three-member committee constituted by the Chief Justice of India to investigate the matter.

- TDG NETWORK

In the present matter, the petition is filed by Supreme Court Advocate Mathews Nedumpara challenging the direction of Supreme Court in the case K. Veeraswami v. Union of India, wherein the court held that a criminal case under section 54 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, CrPC against a sitting High Court or Supreme Court judge can only be filed after consulting the Chief Justice of India, CJI.

The petitioner in the plea stated that while a majority of the judges act with integrity, instances like the present one cannot be skipped from the prescribed criminal procedure.

The petition states that, 'The petitioners, in all humility, believe that the consequence of the aforesaid direction, that no First Information Report, FIR shall be filed, was certainly not present in the minds of the Hon'ble judges. The said direction creates a special class of privileged men or women, immune from the penal laws of the land. Our judges, except for a minority, and not a microscopic one, are men and women of the greatest of erudition, integrity, learning and independence. Judges do not commit crimes. However, the incidents where judges are caught red-handed accepting money as in the case of Justice Nirmal Yadav or in the recent case of Justice Yashwant Varma, so too, being involved POCSO and other cases, cannot be denied. The judgment in K. Veeraswami's case, to the knowledge of the Petitioners has stood in the way of an FIR being registered even in an offence involving POCSO.'

The petition filed stated that the dwindling trust of the public was restored when the Supreme Court made the fire-dousing video and Delhi High Court's Chief Justice Report available for public access on its website.