New Delhi: Attorney General KK Venugopal, during a hearing in the Supreme Court Wednesday, queried advocate Utsav Bains on the authenticity of his claims in a Facebook post with regard to an alleged conspiracy against the Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi.
The case relates to a former court employee alleging on April 19 that she was sexually harassed by Gogoi twice last year.
In the first-half of the hearing, the AG pointed out some inconsistencies in Bains’ Facebook post regarding the conspiracy theory. After the AG’s comments, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta suggested a court monitored SIT inquiry into the matter. “Let this be investigated thoroughly,” Mehta said.
But Bains insisted on a judicial inquiry, saying probe agencies have been misused in the past. The advocate also told the court that he had a “very incriminating” CCTV footage.
In a Facebook post on April 20, Bains linked the sexual harassment allegation against the CJI to what he believed was a “larger conspiracy” by a lobby of disgruntled judges, SC fixers, corporate scamsters and a few corrupt politicians. According to him, they “meticulously planned the conspiracy to force the CJI to resign as their ‘corrupt works were not going through in SC’.”
In the second-half of the hearing Wednesday, Venugopal told the court that he objected to Bains’ stand that certain information about the conspiracy was privileged which he would not disclose.
“This is not acceptable. I really don’t understand how a person can make certain allegations and claim the rest is privileged,’’ Venugopal said. The SC bench replied that it wanted to hear Bains as he claimed to have credible information on the plan to hatch a conspiracy against the CJI.
The SC bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra comprised Justice RF Nariman and Justice Deepak Gupta.
Venugopal also asked Bains why didn’t he inform the police regarding the conspiracy, as it was the legal channel to register such a compliant.
However, the AG’s stand on the issue seemed unacceptable to Bains, who retorted that the AG was making personal remarks against him.
When Justice Nariman warned Bains against making remarks against the AG, the latter turned his back towards the court and started to walk out.
The court then ordered the Delhi Police to provide Bains ‘‘full protection’’ so that nobody can either influence or threaten him and the evidence is kept safe.