Court grants bail to SC staffer arrested for posting wrong info on apex court website

A Delhi court Friday granted bail to a sacked Supreme Court staffer, arrested for allegedly posting wrong information on the apex court's website related to a case involving Reliance Communications chairman Anil Ambani.

Additional Sessions Judge M K Nagpal granted the relief to accused, Tapan Kumar Chakraborty, on a personal bond of Rs 50,000 and one surety of the like amount, saying that no purpose was being served by detaining the applicant into custody further.

"The applicant was arrested in this case on April 7, and he is in custody since then. During this period, he has already been extensively interrogated as the period includes his police custody of 10 days," the court said.

It also noted that the accused was already terminated from the services of the Supreme Court.

Chakraborty and another SC staffer, Manav Sharma, were arrested last month. Sharma is still in judicial custody.

After the January incident, the accused were dismissed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi.

The duo had allegedly uploaded an apex court order, which said Ambani's presence in a case had been dispensed with, despite the court ordering that he be present for the next hearing, police said.

The top court had sacked the two court officials for tampering with its January 7 order on the issue of personal appearance of Ambani in connection with the contempt matter filed against him by Swedish telecom group Ericsson.

Justice Gogoi has passed directions to terminate the services of the two court officials who were responsible for noting the judge's orders and getting them uploaded on the apex court's website.

Justice R F Nariman, who was dealing with Ambani's case, had forwarded a complaint to the CJI that the order in the matter for the presence of the contemnor was not properly found in it.

The order dictated had stated that the personal appearance of the alleged contemnor(s) is not dispensed with, but it found the word 'not' was missing.

The discrepancy in this regard was brought to the notice of the bench on January 10 by senior advocate Dushyant Dave, who was appearing for Ericsson.

Taking note of the fact, an order was passed by the Chief Justice on administrative side dismissing the two employees.