Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday took suo motu cognisance of alleged heckling of some lawyers by a mob last week and constituted a three-judge bench to hear the matter.
The bench of Chief Justice T S Sivagnanam and Justice Chaitali Chatterjee constituted a three-judge bench comprising Justices Arijit Banerjee, Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya and Rajarshi Bharadwaj.
On Monday, the bench had directed Kolkata Police to identify those who allegedly made derogatory comments about Justice Biswajit Basu during protest demonstrations by a group of people against senior advocate and CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharya. The city police commissioner, Manoj Kumar Verma, was directed to submit a report to the court on how, in the presence of police, the judiciary and courts had been subjected to such attacks.
The court’s attention was drawn by the Calcutta High Court Bar which is learnt to have also filed a contempt of court petition. The petitioners pointed out that following last week’s violent protests in front of Bhattacharya’s chamber, an air of panic had been created among the advocates practising at the High Court. Complaints regarding the heckling have been lodged with the police, they submitted. The court, while admitting the petition, observed that such actions against the court and judges were simply unacceptable. It was further observed that there were options for approaching higher courts and higher benches against any order or verdict.
The CJ had said that the alleged incident was brought to his notice on April 25 evening and that the registrar general of the high court, on his directive, informed the deputy commissioner of police of the area.
The protest happened last week in front of Bhattacharya’s chamber on the court premises. The protestors accused the senior advocate of being instrumental in the cancellation of jobs of candidates by the court. They allegedly used derogatory language against Justice Basu for some of his negative observations in some of these cases.