CJ pulls up Joint Commissioner Crime

Karnataka High Court today pulled up a top city police official when he tried to instruct Advocate General while he was making submissions on the batch of PILs seeking to initiate disciplinary proceedings against media and police for the alleged attacks on advocates last month.

Chief Justice Vikramajit Sen pulled up Joint Commissioner of Police Crime (West Division) Pranab Mohanty when he tried to instruct S Vijayashankar while making the submissions.

"Tell him (Mohanty) to leave the court", the Chief Justice told the court officer after which Mohanty immediately left the court. During the earlier hearing before the division bench headed by the Chief Justice, senior counsel Ravivarma Kumar, arguing on behalf of Advocates Association of Bangalore (AAB) who are one of the petitioners, had sought a CBI probe into the March 2 violence in the city civil court complex.

He had submitted that since the allegations in the PILs were against high ranking officials of the Home Department including the then DGP and IG, Shankar Mahadev Bidari, a CBI probe would be most appropriate.

The Advocate General had then submitted that unless the petitioners are able to persuade the court that prima facie no proper investigation has been conducted into the violence, there was no necessity for a CBI probe. Vijayshankar further submitted that the purpose of CBI inquiry is to probe into huge corruption cases, economic offences and bank scams and cases involving inter-state and international ramifications but since the present case was none of the above, CBI enquiry was not necessary.

In the course of his arguments when Vijayshankar referred to a Supreme Court judgement on a petty incident, Chief Justice was quick to observe "do you call the March 2 incident which rocked the entire state as a petty incident".

"Why is the state averse to a CBI inquiry.....what stops the state to have a CBI inquiry into it? What is the difficulty? How does it pin down the state in any manner", Chief Justice Vikramajit Sen observed.

The court adjourned the PILs to tomorrow for further hearing.