Judges have fundamental rights, including right to stand by family, says Delhi HC

A single judge bench of Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma, in its January 24 order, observed that the applicant, “despite being a teacher of the main accused, had conspired with him to cheat the woman and her family.”

“To state that only because the brother of the victim is a judicial officer, the accused is not getting bail due to some influence without any iota of evidence in this regard is preposterous. Accepting this argument will be equivalent to accepting that a judicial officer in case of being victimized or being hurt or cheated as a family member, as in this case being the biological brother of the complainant, does not have the fundamental right to get justice for himself, his family or his immediate kith and kin,” the HC said.

It, further, said that to suggest that not granting bail to the applicant, would amount to taking sides in the judicial system since the person who has been cheated is a judicial officer’s kin, amounts to “judging the judicial system with a myopic eye”.

According to the prosecution, the main accused had befriended the woman on a matrimonial website and married her. Later, it was revealed that he was already married. The prosecution had alleged that the main accused’s profile on the matrimony website showed him as unmarried and he had shown interest in 1,411 profiles of women under different age groups.

The applicant had, the court prima facie observed, “convinced” the woman and her parents for the marriage by misleading them that the main accused was unmarried and his parents had passed away. On this “assurance”, Justice Sharma noted, the woman and her family acted and the main accused and complainant had got married. “The co-accused has targeted innocent women and the present accused in this case has been his close associate to help him succeed in his nefarious design of misguiding the family of the complainant and leading her to get married to him and extracting huge amount of money to his own and the bank account of the present accused for which evidence is on record. Such accused persons need to be dealt with a stern hand so that if granted bail, they will not indulge in similar activities of spoiling the lives of other women,” Justice Sharma underscored.