The Supreme Court has left it to the Madras High Court to take “necessary course corrective measures in the interest of justice” in a case in which an order pronounced and signed by judges in open court later underwent “substantial modifications”.
The Madras High Court Registrar General had submitted a report in the top court on the incident.
A Bench led by Justice Ajay Rastogi, after perusing the report, has recently recorded the top court’s satisfaction. However, the Bench set aside the order under question and asked the High Court to decide the applications filed in the case afresh.
The top court also agreed to a suggestion by senior advocate K. Subramanian, for the petitioner, to maintain the order of interim status quo passed by the High Court in the case for a period of six weeks.
Mr. Subramanian’s case referred to two “different” versions of the same order pronounced by a Division Bench of the High Court on September 1. He had submitted that the copy downloaded by the petitioner from the High Court website reflected the order pronounced in open court. But the certified copy of the order, issued a few days later, had crucial portions missing. These portions include a direction to the respondent to deposit ₹111.62 crore together with accrued interest in the Indian Overseas Bank, Anna Nagar East branch, Chennai in a fixed deposit. The part was present in the downloaded copy but conspicuously absent in the certified copy.
Moreover, the order of status quo in the website copy had also been modified into an order of interim injunction in the certified copy.
Mr. Subramaniam, a former Advocate General of Tamil Nadu, had submitted in the Supreme Court that he had never come across such a turn of events in his 50 years of legal practice.
Mr. Subramaniam had argued that the modifications made were contrary to Order XX Rule 3 of the Civil Procedure Code and judgments passed by the top court that had held that judgments pronounced in open court were final and should not be “reopened” unless in exceptional circumstances.
The order came in a case titled J. Mohammed Nazir versus Mahasemam Trust and another listed before Justice Rastogi’s Bench.
The case stems from allegations of diversion of funds from the public charitable trust to a company and the subsequent alienation of these assets through transfer to a third party, another company.
