NEW DELHI: A former judge of the Andhra Pradesh High Court has approached the Supreme Court against a high court order seeking a probe into his private telephonic conversation regarding charges of misconduct against a sitting SC judge.
A division bench of high court had ordered the inquiry in August, under the supervision of former SC judge Justice R V Raveendran. The petitioner, Justice V. Eswaraiah, filed the plea through advocate Prashant Bhushan and has termed the high court order illegal since it was issued without hearing him and was based on an application of a suspended district munsif magistrate, the other party in the telephonic conversation.
The magistrate had annexed the transcript of the conversation with an application that was filed in an unrelated PIL that pertained to the implementation of Covid-19 guidelines, Justice Eswaraiah said.
In his petition, Justice Eswaraiah clarified that in his conversation with the district official, he had merely mentioned his knowledge of the allegations of misconduct against the SC judge and asked the magistrate if he had any more information.
The judge contended that the subject of his conversation is already a matter of an inquiry by a cabinet subcommittee. Justice Eswaraiah’s plea stated that the HC had erroneously held that his seeking more information, regarding a fact already in public domain and under police scrutiny, amounts to a conspiracy to malign the judges concerned or was a plot against the judiciary.