By IANS,
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Monday dismissed a plea seeking the quashing of the appointment of Justice N.V. Ramana as a judge of the Andhra Pradesh High Court and slapped a cost of Rs.50,000 each on the two petitioners.
The apex court bench of Justice Aftab Alam and Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai while dismissing the petition imposed a cost of Rs.50,000 each on petitioner advocate M. Manohar Reddy and the other advocate who filed the plea with him.
“We find this writ petition not only without merit but also wanting in bona fides. It is, accordingly, dismissed with costs of Rs.50,000 payable by each of the two petitioners. The cost amount must be deposited in a fund for the welfare of the employees of the Andhra Pradesh High Court within four weeks from today,” Justice Alam and Justice Desai said.
Justice Alam said it was “important to protect the court from uncalled for attacks and the individual judges from unjust infliction of injuries”.
Holding that the petition by the two advocates was not a “sincere and honest endeavour to correct something which the petitioners truly perceive to be wrong”, the court said “the real intent of this petition is to malign respondent No.3 (Justice Ramana)”.
The judgment noted that the petition was rooted in a Telugu newspaper report that was based on “incorrect facts and is full of statements and innuendos that might easily constitute the offence of defamation leave alone contempt of court”.
The court said that it appeared that after newspaper report was published, the petitioner advocates collected the record of the criminal case and filed the writ petition on that basis.
Holding that the petition was drafted with “some skill” as it presented the facts of the case in a “twisted way” in order to portray Justice Ramana in “bad light”, the court said: “Had they examined the records of the criminal case objectively and honestly, there was no reason for them not to come to the same conclusion as arrived at in this judgment or as appearing from the report of the Chief Justice, Andhra Pradesh High Court.”
The case related to alleged rioting and destruction of public property in 1981 when Justice Ramana was a student of Nagarjuna University in Andhra Pradesh.