The Supreme Court termed as “grossly inappropriate” the action of a former High Court judge who retained a case file for five months after retirement, and quashed the judgment pronounced by him in the case. “Retaining file of a case for a period of five months after demitting office is an act of gross impropriety on the part of the learned judge. We cannot countenance what has been done in this case,” a bench of Justices A S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan said in its February 13 order. It pointed out that the single judge who retired from the Madras HC on May 26, 2017, had pronounced the operative part of the judgment on April 17, 2017. “There were five weeks available for the learned judge to release the reasoned judgment till the date on which he demitted office. However, the detailed judgment running into more than 250 pages has come out after a lapse of five months from the date on which the learned judge demitted the office. Thus, it is obvious that even after the learned judge demitted the office, he assigned reasons and made the judgment ready,” the SC said. The former judge demitted office on May 26, 2017, and the detailed judgment was made available on October 23 that year. The court said, “We cannot support such acts of impropriety and, therefore . only option is to set aside the impugned judgment and remit the cases to HC for a fresh decision.”
