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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Advocate’s history catches up with judge by Kanchan Chakraborty

Advocate’s history catches up with judge by Kanchan Chakraborty

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published Published on Aug 18, 2011   modified Modified on Aug 18, 2011

On April 10, 2006, Justice Kalyan Jyoti Sengupta of the Calcutta High Court directed a colleague, Justice Soumitra Sen, to return an amount that he had collected in 1993 as a court receiver. Newspapers in Kolkata reported the order in November, setting off a chain of events that saw the matter reaching Rajya Sabha in 2009 and Justice Sen facing impeachment proceedings on Wednesday.

The amount of Rs 33,22,800 — Rs 57,57,204 with interest — was the proceeds of the sale of some goods, subject of a civil suit between SAIL and Shipping Corporation of India Limited. In 1984, when Sen was an advocate in the High Court, he was appointed receiver.

In 1993, the High Court directed Sen to collect and deposit the money in a bank account. And there it remained — the account was in his name — even 10 years later, when SAIL moved court to get it back. The same year, on December 3, 2003, Sen was elevated as a judge.

Justice Sen was discharged from the receivership in September 2004 by an order passed by Justice Suvra Kamal Bhattacharya. The money, however, remained in his account, Sen’s ground being that no order had been passed by the High Court.

In 2006, when Justice Sengupta directed Justice Sen to return the amount with interest, he observed that the “receiver being a practising advocate had betrayed the trust and confidence reposed in him by the court”.

Sen deposited Rs 57,57,204 but filed a revision application before the same bench in December 2006, seeking deletion of the observations made against him. Justice Sengupta disposed of the application but gave Justice Sen the liberty to file a fresh application. The latter moved a division bench against the order. The division bench of Justices Pranab Kumar Chatterjee and Kalidas Mukherjee would later rule in Sen’s favour, but by then the Supreme Court had stepped in.

Reports of Justice Sengupta’s April order had caught the attention of the then Chief Justice of India. From December 10, 2006, Justice Sen was denied a place on any bench. On July 1, 2007, CJI K G Balakrishnan sought a report from Calcutta Chief Justice S S Nijjar. On July 12, Sen met the CJI to present his side of the story.

The division bench order came on September 25, with Justices Chatterjee and Mukherjee clearing Sen of the charges against him and directing that Justice Sengupta’s observations be deleted. Sen later apprised the CJI of this order.

The CJI constituted a three-member committee comprising Justices A P Shah, A K Patnaik and R M Lodha in December 2007 to investigate. Justice Sen appeared before the committee in January 2008 in Kolkata. On February 1, 2008, the panel submitted its report, with the observation that “there has been misappropriation of money (at least temporary) of the sale proceeds”.

The CJI sent the report to Justice Sen on February 6, 2008, and advised him to either resign or seek voluntary retirement before April 2. Sen refused.

The CJI wrote to the Prime Minister in August 2008, citing the probe findings and seeking the initiation of proceedings to remove Sen.

It was on the basis of Balakrishnan’s letter that 58 members of the Rajya Sabha moved a motion on February 20, 2009, to impeach Sen. The Rajya Sabha set up three-member committee — Justice B Sudershan Reddy of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Mukul Mudgal of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and jurist Fali S Nariman — that served Sen a notice in March 2010, asking him to reply to the charges of misappropriation of money.

Sen filed his reply on May 3, 2010, and appeared before the committee through a counsel in June. The committee, whose report was tabled in the Rajya Sabha on November 10, 2010, held Justice Sen guilty of misappropriation and misrepresentation of facts. Sen’s reply to these findings went to the Rajya Sabha chairman on December 9, 2010.

On August 9, the Rajya Sabha asked Justice Sen to appear in the House or represent himself through a counsel on August 17. He appeared personally.

The Indian Express, 18 August, 2011, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/advocates-history-catches-up-with-judge/833398/


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