Bringing Justice Karnan to justice proves elusive

How hard can it be to find a judge? Very hard if the judge in question is CS Karnan.

Desperate police teams from West Bengal to Tamil Nadu are at their wits end as they hunt for the Calcutta High Court judge, hoping to capture him and bring him to justice. But the 61-year-old has proved to be as elusive as he has been brash, defying the Supreme Court and passing his own judgements against his peers.

Clues that he could be in a temple town in Andhra Pradesh or a holiday resort in Tamil Nadu have proved to be dead ends.

Police are now staring at the possibility that Karnan, who was last seen in Chennai, may have fled the country, perhaps to Sri Lanka.

A senior police officer in Chennai said on Monday: "The whereabouts of Justice Karnan are not known yet. A West Bengal police team continues its search for him." He said the role of Tamil Nadu police was limited to providing logistics and technical support to the visiting team.

Karnan s flight from justice--the Supreme Court ordered him arrested six days ago on contempt of court charges--has provided endless fodder for mirth and ridicule by netizens, not only against the country s security apparatus but also against the judiciary itself.

"And in the end top police officers of two states of India are not able to locate a High Court judge - are we joking or this is the state of affairs of police and judiciary?" asked Dinesh Jain, contributing his comments to a chorus of readers reaction to a news article on a national newspaper s website.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sentenced Karnan, a native of Chennai, to six months imprisonment, and directed his immediate arrest in an unprecedented order against a sitting high court judge. The court ordered West Bengal's Director General of Police to carry out the arrest and lodge him in a jail.

"If the Intelligence (apparatus) cannot keep an eye on persons like Karnan, who has been in the news in the last 6 months if not more, can they be relied upon for other important duties?" said another netizen in the readers comments section.

Targeting the judiciary, another reader posted: "a judge doesn't believe in law and they claim they have the right to pass judgement."

The West Bengal police team has already questioned several persons, including Karnan s kin. Karnan left Kolkata for Chennai by an early morning flight on Tuesday, hours before the apex court ordered his arrest.

Until a couple of hours after the court order, Karnan, who was staying at the Tamil Nadu government state guest house in Chennai, was meeting and discussing nonchalantly with journalists and visitors. He then went incommunicado when the full impact of the apex court ruling dawned on everyone.

A posse of policemen, headed by an assistant commissioner of police-cadre officer from Kolkata, landed in Chennai the next day.

When the police team arrived at the guest house, it did not find either the judge or the two lawyers who had accompanied him.