By IANS
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Tuesday rebuked noted criminal lawyer R.K. Anand, saying his plea for a direction to a Delhi High Court judge to withdraw himself from a bench conducting contempt of court proceedings against him was akin to “bench-hunting.”
A bench of Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice P. Sathasivam said: “It’s for the judge to say that I’m withdrawing from a case and not for the lawyers to demand it.
“We are looking at it with a different perspective. If we entertain your case, practically there will be a bench-hunting,” the bench observed.
Justice Pasayat made the terse observation while refusing to accord an early hearing to Anand’s plea for suspending the ongoing contempt of court proceedings against him in the high court by a division bench of Justice Manmohan Sarin and Justice Madan Lokur for his alleged nexus with prosecution witness Sunil Kulkarni in what has come to be known as the BMW hit-and-run case, involving former navy Chief Admiral S.M. Nanda’s grand son Sanjeev Nanda.
“Sorry, no urgency,” said Pasayat, while refusing to take up for hearing Anand’s plea, already slated for hearing on Dec 14.
The high court had taken cognisance of a sting operation telecast by the private television news channel NDTV in May, purportedly exposing the nexus between prosecution and defence lawyers in the road accident case.
A division bench of the high court comprising Justice Sarin and Justice S.K. Mishra had issued notices to then public prosecutor I.U. Khan and defence counsel Anand asking them why the contempt to court proceedings should not be initiated against them for derailing the course of justice and bringing disrepute to the judiciary.
Anand, in reply, appealed to the bench saying that Sarin needed to withdraw from this bench as he is biased and prejudiced against him.
On Anand’s plea, Sarin had delivered a detailed order discarding his apprehensions of prejudice. But Mishra, in a separate order on Anand’s plea, said that he did not concur with Sarin’s order owing to his lack of knowledge of the controversy.
On Anand’s plea, Delhi High Court Chief Justice M.K. Sharma, however, reconstituted the bench to conduct the contempt of court proceedings.
But the new bench still had Sarin, besides Lokur.
It was against this reconstitution of the new bench that Anand had come to the apex court, where his counsel Rajiv Datta argued that Sarin was hearing the case against his client despite the fact that Mishra did not concur with the order of Sarin dismissing his bias against Anand.
But the apex court bench noted that Mishra did not concur with Sarin’s order simply because of “his lack of the knowledge of the case”.
Anand approached the apex court a day after NDTV aired yet another sting operation showing that he hosted BMW prosecution witness Kulkarni at his palatial bungalow in Shimla for one and a half years.