Karnataka High Court Chief Justice P.D. Dinakaran, facing allegations of land encroachment at Tiruvallur in Tamil Nadu, has said he will come out of the muddle with his hands clean.
“It is not for me to prove my innocence. A day will come when people will realise that I am a person with clean hands and heart. I will come out of this with clean hands,” Justice Dinakaran told PTI here on Sunday.
The Law Ministry has rejected the recommendation of the Supreme Court collegium to elevate him to the Supreme Court. Highly-placed sources told PTI that the collegium would take a decision by Tuesday whether or not to reconsider Justice Dinakaran’s name for elevation.
The 59-year-old judge, who refused to comment on the Law Ministry’s stand of not holding probe against him, said his delicate position as Chief Justice had forced him to observe self-restraint to “counter and expose” the people behind the campaign, which ultimately would not succeed and “truth will prevail.”
Justice Dinakaran, who questioned the timing of the opposition to his elevation as the judge of the apex court, said his career as a judge since 1996 had been “clean and spotless” without any controversy and only after the collegium’s recommendation, people from a certain quarter started a malicious campaign against him through the media.
“No one questioned my integrity for over 13 years since I became the judge of the High Court. I have been the Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court for the last 16 months. Only 10 days after the recommendation for my elevation to the Supreme Court, certain people started campaign against me through media,” he said.
The judge said, “I know public does not believe all these things ….”
He said the campaign against him was going on through the media without verifying the facts and asked journalists to go to Tiruvallur [in Tamil Nadu] to verify the facts for themselves.
“I have an open offer to the media to go and verify the facts and expose the truth,” he said asserting that the reports of land grabbing against him were false.
