SC seeks report from Registrar General of the Madras HC After CBI’s Claim that a Reasoned Judgment was Uploaded After Judge’s Retirement

Today (September 03), the Supreme Court (SC) of India was hearing a Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) challenging the order of the Madras High Court Single-Judge Justice T. Mathivanan quashing a corruption case against an IRS officer. In this case, “The contention of the petitioner is that on 15th May 2017, a single line order was pronounced by the learned Judge and till the date on which the learned judge demitted office reasoned judgment was not available. We therefore direct Registrar General of High Court at to furnish the following information…” The SC bench of Justice Abhay S Oka and Justice Augustine George Masih directed the Registrar General of the Madras HC to submit a report following the CBI’s claim. The SC directed the Registrar to provide the following information:

• Date when the Registry received the detailed judgment from the judge’s office.
• Date when the detailed judgment was uploaded.
• Whether there was any administrative direction from the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court regarding de novo hearings in the nine cases where a similar issue of delayed detailed judgments occurred after Justice Mathivanan's retirement.

The top court directed the Registry of the Madras HC to submit the report by the end of this month. While hearing the matter, the bench also noted that this was not the first when the top court had dealt with such an issue. It quoted a recent decision delivered by Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice Abhay S Oka where the judgment of Justice T. Mathivanan was quashed on the ground that he released the detailed reasons for the judgment approximately 5 months after retirement. Today, Senior Advocate Siddharth Luthra, Sri Singh, Kv Girish Chaudhary, Rajat Singh, Aurica Bhattacharya, Sarthak Chandra, and Arun Pratap Singh Rajawat, appeared for the accused whereas Advocates Nachiketa Joshi, Swati Ghildiyal, Praneet Pranav, Satvika Thakur, Mukesh Kumar Maroria and Arvind Kumar Sharma, represented the State.