HC reprimands inept ASJ

Times of India 29 Jan 2010

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court reprimanded an additional sessions judge for blindly relying on the version of the prosecution and ignoring actual evidence while delivering judgments. Equating the lapse to a judge sleeping on his job, a division bench comprising Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Justice Suresh Kait on Wednesday termed it as nothing short of "serious blunder'' and "misdemeanour.''

The HC was alarmed to note that not just once but five times it came across cases where additional sessions judge Narottam Kaushal simply copied extracts of the chargesheet onto his verdict and ignored what the witnessess actually said in court. "Where the judge proceeds to sleep or take a short or long nap, the casualty is life and liberty of the accused,'' the judges noted, pointing out how ASJ Kaushal had dealt in a cavalier fashion with cases where the maximum penalty is death. HC was surprised to note that the ASJ didn't even record the different stand taken by witnesses in court, instead chose to stick to facts as mentioned in the chargesheet.

"This is the fifth decision noted by us in the last 10 working days, author whereof is ASJ Narottam Kaushal, where on a reading of the decisions it has been brought out to us that the judge reproduces evidence proved by the prosecution by merely narrating facts from chargesheet ignoring the actual evidence,'' HC noted while hearing a case of robbery-cum-murder.

Marking its verdict to the inspecting judges of ASJ Kaushal, HC said its observations need to be brought to the attention of them. "In fact, the use of the word `blunder' would be a misnomer... the correct expression has to be that 'we noted a complete non application of mind by the judge','' the judges went on to note in their verdict, pointing out how ASJ Kaushal failed to note that the statement by the lone survivor of the crime had given a different statement in court to what was attributed to her in the chargesheet.

"These misdemeanours noted by us and committed by ASJ Kaushal were ignored by us as we thought they were aberrations, but by the time we detected the fifth such case, we realized that these were not aberrations but instances of a judge totally oblivious of his duties,'' the HC observed, even as it partially reversed the trial court's order and acquitted one of the accused.