Calcutta HC judge accuses another judge of acting for political party for staying probe in fake caste certificate case and tells CBI to ignore stay order, SC takes cognisance

Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of Calcutta HC accused Justice Soumen Sen, who is heading the division bench, of acting for a political party in WB for staying CBI probe in fake caste certificate matter. He directed CBI to ignore the stay order and start the probe

The controversy between the Calcutta High Court’s single-judge bench order and division bench decision has now been taken up by the Supreme Court as the top court took suo moto cognisance on the issue.

A five-judge bench led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud will hear the matter in a special sitting on January 27. Besides CJI Chandrachud, other judges on the bench are justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, Surya Kant and Aniruddha Bose.

The case title “In Re: Orders of Calcutta High Court dated 24.01.2024 AND 25.01.2024 and Ancillary Issues,” arose out of some orders passed by Calcutta High Court’s single judge bench and division bench disagreeing with each other.

Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay in his order has accused Justice Soumen Sen, who is heading the division bench, of acting for a political party in the WB state”.

A single judge of Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay had directed to ignore Calcutta HC’s division bench order and asked the CBI to begin its probe into the fake caste certificate matter.

Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay said that Justice Sen is acting clearly for some political party in the WB State and, therefore, the orders passed by the bench led by Justice Sen are required to be relooked if the Supreme Court thinks so.

Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay said that Justice Sen has done it to save some political party in power and his (Justice Sen) actions are clearly tantamount to misconduct.

The matter arises out of a petition in HC whereby it was alleged that rampantly issuing fake caste certificates to many persons to ease their admission to medical courses.

The single judge bench of Justice Gangopadhyay on January 24 asked the West Bengal Police to hand over documents related to the matter to the CBI. After some time the matter was mentioned before a division bench of Justice Sen and Uday Kumar, which stayed the single judge’s order.

The single judge bench of Justice Gangopadhyay again took up the matter on and asked the WB police to give the paper to CBI. The division bench on Thursday did not agree with the single-judge bench decision.

The single judge again heard the matter on January 25 and passed certain remarks against Justice Sen.

(This news report is published from a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has not been written or edited by OpIndia staff)