The city police on Thursday refused to register a case against the “unknown” person who had approached the Chief Justice of Karnataka, Subhro Kamal Mukherjee, seeking a “favourable order” by “offering certain favour” in return.
Jayakumar Hiremath, an RTI activist, submitted a complaint to the High Grounds police station based on the remarks, reported in the media, made by Chief Justice Mukherjee during the proceedings of a petition on July 5. He had recused himself from hearing the petition citing “personal reasons”.
Mr. Hiremath filed a complaint asking the police to find the identity of the person, but the police refused to register a case as the matter is “sub judice”.
It was reported that Chief Justice Mukherjee, during the proceedings, had asked his staff to bring a visiting card of a person who had met him at his official residence on July 4.
He showed the visiting card to the advocates representing the petitioner in the case, which was listed as serial number 34 of the cause list of Court Hall No-1 on July 5.
The Chief Justice told the advocates that a Bengali-speaking person, who had left his visiting card, had sought “an order favourable to the petitioner in the case listed as serial number 34” and had “offered” certain return “favour”. The Chief Justice asked the advocates to take a photocopy of the card.
The advocates, who were representing the petitioner Umrah Developer and its proprietor D. Babu alias Yusuf Shariff, had told the Chief Justice that they did not know the person whose name was printed on the visiting card.
