Kolkata, April 28 Calcutta High Court Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam, on Monday, directed the Kolkata Police to identify those who made derogatory comments about fellow judge Justice Biswajit Basu during protest demonstrations by a group of people against senior advocate and CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharya.
The protest happened last week in front of Bhattacharya’s chamber on the court premises.
Bhattacharya had, during the trial of the school job scam, put forth several arguments, which the protesters believe helped in formulating the final judgement in the case. As a result, they said, there were negative court orders resulting in the termination of jobs of several teaching and non-teaching people in state-run schools.
During those protests last week, the protesters also used derogatory language against Justice Basu for some of his negative observations in some of these cases.
On Monday, some members of the Calcutta High Court Bar Association drew the attention of the High Court’s division bench of Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam and Justice Chaitali Chattopadhyay to the entire development and also filed a contempt of court petition.
While admitting the petition, the Chief Justice observed that such actions against the court and judges were simply unacceptable. Justice Sivagnanam also observed that there were options for approaching higher courts and higher benches against any order or verdict.
Thereafter, he directed the Kolkata Police to identify those responsible for such actions last week and also directed the city police commissioner, Manoj Kumar Verma, to submit a report to the court on how, in the presence of police, the judiciary and courts had been subjected to such attacks.
In the contempt-of-court petition, the petitioners pointed out that following last week's violent protests in front of Bhattacharya’s chamber, an air of panic had been created among the advocates practising at the Calcutta High Court.
“Orders prohibiting assembly of more than a specific number of persons are imposed in the entire area in the vicinity of the Calcutta High Court. In such a situation, how could the police allow the gathering of the crowd that protested last week? While the demonstrations were going on, the policemen posted in the area acted like puppets and refrained from taking any action for almost four hours. Justice Basu was maligned during those protests,” one of the petitioners argued.
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