It’s not been a good few years for the judiciary in India. There have been a few controversies that have cast a poor light on the courts, but no one ever thought that one day, they would have to make an unprecedented decision (and according to some, unconstitutional) to throw a fellow judge into jail.
Calcutta High Court judge, CS Karnan, has been sentenced to six months in jail by the Supreme Court; a first of its kind decision. This decision was taken after Karnan sentenced a Chief Justice and seven other judges to five years in jail and slapped them with Rs one lakh fine as well. Incidentally, this contempt of court order will end when Karnan is due for retirement, a very ‘fortuitous’ decision indeed.
But without questioning the judgement, which only came to pass after Karnan dared to take on peers from the higher courts, there is still a lot to be said about the state of the judiciary in India. This certainly does not cast them in a favourable light and there is still the matter of some who point out that the Supreme Court cannot remove a judge from office. All said and done, it’s about time the judiciary put measures in place to avoid this happening again.
