BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court has pulled up Chief Judicial Magistrate at Malur in Kolar district, Gayathri, for her conduct during a road rage incident.
The court took serious exception to permitting the police to delete the video clip of her squabble with a two-wheeler rider, for allegedly overtaking her car in which she was travelling with her husband, from social media, though she is a complainant in the road rage incident.
The court has stayed all proceedings in the FIR registered by Gayathri. “The judicial officer is the complainant, sits over a requisition ostensibly brought over by the jurisdictional police at the dictat of the complainant, permits, rather directs, for deletion of the video content.
The complainant forgets that she is in a status of the complainant, sits over the circulation of the video, forming the fulcrum of the complaint and directs deletion. She was a judge in her own cause, which the law abhors,” said Justice M Nagaprasanna.
Extracting the order passed by the judicial officer to delete the video, the court said that it prima facie depicts conduct in betrayal of high standards inseparable from judicial office. All this sprang from the ego of the judicial officer, which appears to have taken a dent on account of a particular overtaking of the car by the two-wheeler, and the entire squabble escalating to the level of setting the criminal law into motion.
Therefore, it becomes necessary to observe that a judge's greatest ornament is not the robe that the judge wears, but the humility with which the judge wears it, the court observed.
"The authority of the judicial officer does not rest upon coercive power. Therefore, a judicial officer is expected to personify patience in provocation; restraint in conflict and sobriety in conduct. When the same judge is perceived who has succumbed to anger, intimidation or abuse in a public place, it generates a dent on public confidence in the judiciary. Judicial temperament cannot be confined to the courtroom; it must accompany the judge where he or she goes. The conduct prima facie betrays the said standard necessary to be professed", the court noted.
Noting that an injured ego can never become the foundation for a criminal prosecution, the court observed that the issue transcends the boundaries of a mere altercation and enters the realm of institutional concern.