The Supreme Court on Thursday closed the suo moto proceedings initiated by it in April 2019 to probe into the larger conspiracy behind allegations of sexual harassment levelled against then CJI Ranjan Gogoi.
Justice Kaul-led three-judge bench decided to close suo moto proceeding initiated on SG Tushar Mehta’s request a day after media houses like the Scroll.in and several other Left to far-Left portals had carried the story of a former employee of the SC levelling sexual harassment allegations against ex-CJI Ranjan Gogoi on April 19, 2019.
It was followed by a complaint from Advocate Utsav Bains, who alleged conspiracy behind the charges levelled at Gogoi by the former employee of the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court disposes off the suo motu proceedings against former CJI Ranjan Gogoi, against whom sexual harassment allegations were levelled in 2019. pic.twitter.com/N3xs3QbaWK
— ANI (@ANI) February 18, 2021
While closing the proceedings, the three-judge bench, headed by Justice SK Kaul said: “The Justice AK Patnaik report acknowledges that the existence of conspiracy cannot be ruled out.” The SC bench was referring to a report submitted by a one-judge Committee headed by former SC judge, Justice (Retd) AK Patnaik, who was tasked to probe a larger conspiracy in the allegations against Justice Gogoi. AK Patnaik was commissioned to also probe “whether middlemen and fixers working with disgruntled court officials were trying to fix judges” against Gogoi.
The report by Patnaik had acknowledged that a wider conspiracy to level charges on sexual harassment of former CJI Gogoi “cannot be ruled out”.
Conspiracy to defame Ranjan Gogoi for his decision on the finalisation of NCR-Assam
The SC said that the Intelligence Bureau had also submitted a report to the AK Patnaik committee which had stated that some people were unhappy with Ranjan Gogoi because of the tough stands he had taken for finalisation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam. And the sexual harassment charges on Gogoi could be a part of a conspiracy hatched by these people to defame the then CJI,
The SC bench said that AK Patnaik panel was not able to get electronic records like WhatsApp messages to probe conspiracy to frame ex-CJI Gogoi as two years have passed and recovering electronic evidence will be difficult.
The apex court also said that since the in-house committee of the Supreme Court had also found no substance in the allegations levelled against Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, there was no purpose in continuing the suo moto proceedings against the ex-CJI.
Leftist websites break story of sexual harassment allegations against ex-CJI
For the uninitiated, in May 2019, a month after the far-leftist media portal Scroll.in published a report accusing Ranjan Gogoi of sexual harassment, an In-house committee of the Supreme Court, comprising of Justices S A Bobde, Indu Malhotra and Indira Banerjee, submitted its report which said that they found no substance in the allegations contained in the complained dated 19.4.2019 of a former employee of the Supreme Court of India.
A former employee of the Supreme Court had levelled charges of sexual molestation against CJI Gogoi, which is being probed by the panel. Few days after that, advocate Utsav Basin had alleged that the charges are part of a larger conspiracy involving disgruntled former employees, lawyers, judges and corporates to fix the Supreme Court.
