‘Bon appetit’: Justice Rajnish Bhatnagar as Delhi HC bids farewell to him

Justice Bhatanagar – who has practised as a lawyer for 13 years and thereafter served as a judicial officer for 24 years – said that in this long span of time all the goodness that the legal profession had given him the greatest of all is by far had been the people he met along the way and the memories he had created. He thanked the senior members of the bar, former and serving judges of the High Court as well as the district court, his family, friends and his staff.

Born on June 14, 1962, Justice Bhatnagar, who had an inclination towards engineering, completed his B.Sc. from Delhi University in 1983 and thereafter did his LL.B. from DU’s Campus Law Centre in 1987.

He enrolled as an advocate with the Bar Council of Delhi in 1987 and practised in both the Civil and Criminal jurisdiction. He thereafter joined the Delhi Higher Judicial Service on May 26, 2000 and presided over various Civil and Criminal Courts and had been District Judge of North-West District, Rohini Courts from December 8, 2016, to May 26, 2019. On May 27, 2019, he was elevated as a Permanent Judge of the Delhi High Court.

Speaking about Justice Bhatnagar’s judicial experience, Acting Chief Justice Manmohan said, “He brought immense judicial experience on the bench owing to his long career in the district judiciary and the same reflected in his judicial approach. A deep understanding of the nature of litigation and litigants before the courts of first instance or the trial courts is an asset for a judge irrespective of his place in the judicial hierarchy…In his approach towards the law he never leaned in favour of rigidity.”

Reflecting on an important ruling given by Justice Bhatnagar, the Acting Chief Justice further said, “As a judge he displayed great compassion, empathy and sensitivity which reflected well from his observations in a case involving the death of a student from IIT Delhi. Speaking for the court he urged the faculty and staff of the institution to conduct suitable counselling of the students to make them understand that a lot could be achieved in life without succumbing to performance stress. A crucial observation indeed in the times we live in.”

This matter pertained to the alleged suicides last year of two IIT-Delhi students who belonged to the Scheduled Caste (SC) community. The parents of the students had sought directions for the registration of a first information report (FIR) and an impartial probe into the “caste-based atrocities” being committed in the institution. Meanwhile, the police submitted that no doubt the deceased students were bright and young, however, there was nothing to show that they had faced caste-based discrimination at the IIT campus.

In a detailed judgment delivered on January 30, Justice Bhatnagar had observed, “It is of utmost priority to make the young minds understand that though scoring good marks and performing your best is important but it is not the most important thing in life and one can certainly give his/her best without succumbing to the pressures or stress of performing better.”

The judge had said that the most significant way of instilling this into young minds is by teaching them in the “very same campus where they spend years” of their student lives, the value of prioritising their health, whether physical or mental, and this will also give them the confidence to face every challenge in life.

Notably Justice Bhatnagar was part of the division bench which had in October 2022 rejected Umar Khalid’s bail plea in the “larger conspiracy case” pertaining to the 2020 Delhi riots.

On Thursday the High Court bid farewell to Justice Sachdeva and Justice V Kameswar Rao following the notification of their transfer by the Central government to the Madhya Pradesh High Court and Karnataka High Court, respectively.

With the departure of the three judges, the bench strength would now come down to 39, against a sanctioned strength of 45 Permanent Judges and 15 Additional Judges.