Will go to root of lawyer's allegation of people trying to frame CJI: SC

Three-judge Bench to continue hearing lawyers' claims on Wednesday, asks him to file additional affidavit with more details about evidence against people

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it would go to the root of the claims, made by lawyer Utsav Bains, that he had been approached by some people to “fix” the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Justice Ranjan Gogoi by making false claims of sexual harassment against him.

“We will inquire. We will go to the root of alleged claims of fixers at work and manipulating judiciary. If they continue to work…none of us will survive. Fixing has no role to play in the system. We take it to the logical end" the three-judge Bench of Justices Arun Mishra, Rohinton Nariman and Deepak Gupta said.

The three-judge Bench is hearing a suo-motto case after an advocate Utsav Bains had filed an affidavit claiming that he had been approached by certain people to frame CJI Gogoi in an alleged sexual harassment case. The advocate had also claimed that he was offered Rs 1.5 crore by a person named Ajay to represent the top court’s former woman employee who has accused CJI of harassing her.

The claims were made by Bains after an unprecedented hearing at the top on court during which Gogoi had said that the allegations of sexual harassment against him were part of a larger conspiracy to “deactivate” the office of the CJI, and that he would “not stoop so low even to deny them”. This bench was assembled on Saturday after a former female employee of the apex court sent a detailed affidavit to the residences of 22 judges, giving details of the alleged harassment.

During the hearing on Wednesday, Bains filed his affidavit, which was perused by the three-judge bench, following which they summoned the chiefs of the Central Bureau of Investigation, Intelligence Bureau and Delhi Police to come to the court and meet the judges in their chamber. The three agencies, the court had observed, would help them in validating the claims made by Bains in the affidavit.

Later in the day, when the three judge Bench sat again, it asked Bains to file an additional affidavit after he claimed during the hearing that he had more “incriminating evidence” against the people who were trying to “deactivate” the office of the CJI. The top court will continue hearing the case on Thursday.