By IANS
New Delhi : Rattled by the Supreme Court rebuke last week for indulging in what the court described as “bench hunting”, noted criminal lawyer R.K. Annad, who is facing allegations of trying to win over a prosecution witness in the BMW hit-and-run case to save his client, Friday withdrew his plea against a Delhi High Court judge.
Anand’s counsel Rajeev Dutta apprised the bench of Justice Arijit Pasayat that his client wanted to take back his petition seeking a direction to a Delhi High Court judge to withdraw himself from a bench conducting a contempt to court proceeding against him for his alleged nexus with a prosecution witness in the BMW case.
The bench allowed Anand’s counsel to withdraw his petition.
Earlier on Dec 4, the bench had rebuked Anand, saying his plea for a direction to a Delhi High Court judge to withdraw himself from the bench was akin to “bench hunting”.
Disapproving the plea, the bench had 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 had observed.
Pasayat had 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 at Delhi High Court by a division bench of Justices Manmohan Sarin and Madan Lokur for his alleged nexus with prosecution witness Sunil Kulkarni in the BMW hit-and-run case, involving former navy Chief Admiral S.M. Nanda’s grand son Sanjeev Nanda.
“Sorry, no urgency,” Justice Pasayat, while refusing to take up for hearing Anand’s plea. The plea was already slated for hearing on Dec 14.
After a private television news channel NDTV in May this year aired a sting operation purportedly exposing the nexus between prosecution and defence lawyers in the BMW hit-and-run case, the high court took cognisance of the allegations.
Following the expose, a high court division bench comprising Justices Sarin and S.K. Mishra issued notices to the erstwhile public prosecutor I.U. Khan and defence counsel Anand asking them why the contempt to court proceedings should not be launched against them for derailing the course of justice and bringing disrepute to the judiciary.
But Anand, in turn, appealed to the bench saying Sarin needed to withdraw from the case as he was 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”.
Chief Justice M.K. Sharma of the Delhi High Court, however, on Anand’s plea had reconstituted the high court bench to conduct the contempt to court proceedings.
The new bench, however, still had Sarin, besides Mandan Lokur.
It was against this reconstitution of the new bench at the high court that Anand went to the apex court.
His counsel 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 court had noted that Mishra did not concur with Sarin’s order simply because of “his lack of the knowledge of the case.”
Pasayat’s observations on Dec 4 had made it clear that Anand’s petition was likely to be thrown out of the court.