Supreme Court Closes Case Examining Alleged Conspiracy against the Judiciary

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The Supreme Court Thursday closed the case registered by it in 2019 to examine the alleged conspiracy against it in the wake of sexual harassment allegations against then CJI Justice Ranjan Gogoi.

The bench of the Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian noted in the order “…two years having passed and the possibility of recovery of electronic records at this distance of time is remote, especially since the scope of the enquiry and the power of the learned judge is limited, no useful purpose will be served by continuing these proceedings.”

The order also notes that “the report (by Justice A K Patnaik) also acknowledges that the existence of a conspiracy cannot be completely ruled out”.

The court has taken note of the letter written by the Intelligence Bureau Director. It notes in the order “The learned Judge has recorded in the final paragraph that the Director of IB in his letter dated 05.07.2019 has stated that on account of the then Chief Justice of India taking serious tough decisions like in the case relating to National Register of Citizens (NRC), there was strong reason to believe that persons who were unhappy with those decisions hatched a conspiracy against the then Chief Justice of India.”

Allegations of sexual misconduct emerged against then Chief Justice of India Justice Ranjan Gogoi in April 2019. Later, an inquiry committee of the court dismissed the allegation.