New Delhi, December 14: In a strong indictment of former Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan, Supreme Court’s sitting judge, Justice HL Gokhale on Tuesday claimed that the former CJI had received Madras High Court judge S Reghupati’s letter alleging interference in judicial functioning by former Union telecom minister A Raja.
Gokhale’s remarks came just days after ex-CJI Balakrishnan flatly denied receiving any letter from Justice Reghupati.
Justice Gokhale was the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court when the letter was forwarded by him to Balakrishnan.
The Madras HC had last Tuesday revealed that Justice Reghupati had written such a letter, reacting to which Balakrishnan, who is now chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, said: “The allegations against me are baseless. I have received no such letter from Justice Reghupati.”
However, Justice Gokhale contradicted the former CJI, saying he had forwarded Justice Reghupati’s letter mentioning A Raja’s name to Balakrishnan and that he had also received a response from the latter’s office subsequently.
In the letter, Justice Reghupati had claimed that A Raja was trying to influence him in a case involving forging of marksheets.
The former CJI has consistently maintained that he did not receive any letter from Justice Reghupati.
The former CJI had however acknowledged that the then Madras HC CJI, HL Gokhale, had sent him a brief report on Justice Reghupati’s startling revelation in an open court that a Union minister rang him up purportedly to influence a pending criminal matter.
“But CJ Gokhale didn’t mention the name of the person (A Raja) in his letter,” Balakrishnan said.
“The letter written by Justice Gokhale did not mention anything about influence by a Union minister. Justice Gokhale didn’t mention that the Union minister had a conversation with a judge in his letter written to me,” he said.
It may be mentioned here that soon after Justice Reghupati made the disclosure in July last year, then CJI Balakrishnan had said that if a person had made such a call, it amounted to interference in the administration of justice. “It’s an offence liable to face the contempt of court action,” he had said.
The Madras HC had said that it was Raja who rang up Reghupati and this information had been given to then CJI.
Clearing his name, Balakrishnan said if anything that amounted to interference in judicial function had happened, Justice Reghupati could have exercised his powers of contempt of court, for which no permission is required from the CJI.
—Agencies