Kolkata, April 29 The Calcutta High Court has initiated suo motu proceedings on the harassment of advocates and the public maligning of a judge last week during protests by a group of people against senior lawyer and CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharya.
At the same time, on Tuesday, the Calcutta High Court issued a notification ordering the constitution of a three-judge special bench to hear the matter. The three judges in the special bench are Justice Arijit Bandopadhyay, Justice Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj.
However, it is not yet clear when the first hearing in the matter at the three-judge special bench will happen.
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 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.
Justice Sivagnanam admitted the petition and directed the Kolkata Police to immediately identify those involved in that ruckus. He 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.
The members of the Bar Association, who drew the attention of the Chief Justice in the matter, accused the police of being mute spectators while the protesters carried out the ruckus for almost three hours.
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