New Delhi: The two former employees of the Supreme Court arrested for allegedly fudging an order in favour of industrialist Anil Ambani were not alone in the conspiracy, the Delhi Police Crime Branch has claimed.
In their submission in a Delhi trial court opposing the bail petitions of the two men, the police claimed that “other persons have also misused their position in the office to give undue advantage to the ‘same person’”.
The document, which has been accessed by ThePrint, suggests that these others were also Supreme Court employees like the jailed duo — former court master Manav Sharma and former assistant registrar Tapan Chakraborty.
According to the Delhi Police Crime Branch document, they arrived at the conclusion following Chakraborty and Sharma’s interrogation.
In the submission, the Crime Branch said that as an employee in “Section-X” of the Supreme Court, Chakraborty was well aware of the working and the loopholes of the process involved in the uploading of documents/orders passed by the apex court.
“Role of some other staff of the Section-X of the registry office is still under probe (sic),” the Crime Branch claimed, informing the trial court that more documents from the Supreme Court registry office were needed to “confront” other staff and “unearth this deep-rooted conspiracy”.
Also read: SC order ‘fudged to help Anil Ambani’ case back under scanner in CJI Ranjan Gogoi crisis
The case
In January, a Supreme Court bench comprising Justice R.F. Nariman and Justice Vineet Saran had rejected Ambani’s plea for exemption from personal appearance in the contempt of court case stemming from Reliance Communications’ failure to pay back Rs 550 crore to Swedish telecom major Ericsson. The court refused to allow the exemption, but the order uploaded on the website suggested otherwise.
The discrepancy was noticed by Ericsson lawyer Dushyant Dave, and the corrected order uploaded three days later.
After the discrepancy was discovered, Nariman announced in court that he had instituted an inquiry into the episode. The inquiry revealed that court officials had allegedly taken down the order in shorthand and later transcribed it and hence the mix-up was “not accidental” but “deliberate”.
Sharma and Chakraborty were sacked by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi in February after it was first alleged that they had tampered with the court order, and subsequently booked for cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy.
The duo was arrested earlier this month. On Monday, they were produced in the court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Manish Khurana at the Patiala House Courts in the capital where their judicial custody was extended yet again, this time by 14 days. The accused will now be produced in the court on 13 May.
The family members of the suspects were present in court, where Chakraborty, in tears, sought the judge’s permission to speak to his wife, while Sharma wished to speak to his brother.
Chakraborty also cited his “medical history of hypertension” to request that he be allowed to sit in a room outside the jail, saying he found it difficult to breathe in a closed space. He also sought access to his spectacles, which he said had been denied to him despite multiple requests. The judge forwarded his request to the jail superintendent.
Also read: On harassment charge, CJI Gogoi did what he accused CJI Misra of — betray natural justice
Named in sexual harassment saga too
The allegations against the duo — explosive in their own right — took a more sinister turn when their names cropped up in a lawyer’s affidavit alleging a controversy to unseat CJI Gogoi.
Earlier this month, a former Supreme Court employee wrote to 22 judges of the apex court, alleging that she had been sexually harassed by Gogoi while she was posted at his home office.
Soon afterwards, lawyer Utsav Bains claimed in an affidavit before the Supreme Court that the allegations stemmed from a larger conspiracy against the CJI, and that they were the handiwork of certain “judgment fixers” looking to avenge Gogoi’s crackdown on them. Sharma and Chakraborty are among those named in the affidavit.