Following her unsuccessful efforts seeking a Supreme Court-ordered (SC) probe into allegations of bribery-taking by top apex court judges, late Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Kalikho Pul’s widow on Monday sought the SC’s permission for “lodging an FIR to investigate the allegations” made by him in his sensational suicide note.
In a written submission to Justices J Chelameshwar, Ranjan Gogoi and Madan B Lokur, the late CM’s senior widow Dangwimsai Pul has sought their “sanction for lodging an FIR and investigating the allegations of corruption as contained in the suicide note”.
Probe Shouldn’t be Treated as a ‘Letter Petition’
Saying that it is “imperative therefore that these allegations contained in this note are credibly and thoroughly investigated by an independent investigating authority”, the five-page letter points out that that a probe “after the registration of an FIR would require the prior sanction of the Chief Justice/other judges of the Supreme Court”.
The letter says:
A Constitution Bench of this Hon’ble Court in the case of Veeraswami Vs Union of India (1991) held that to protect the independence of the judiciary, no FIR could be registered against a judge nor an investigation be undertaken by any investigative agency of the country without the prior sanction of the Chief Justice of India, which would have to be sought by the President.
Providing a sequence of events that led to her 17 February letter to the Supreme Court to “send by request (for an investigation by the apex court’s administrative side) my request to the appropriate judge/judges for granting sanction for investigation in this matter”, Dangwimsai Pul says it was “not proper (for the Supreme Court) to have sent it to the judicial side and listed as a letter petition before court room number 13”.
Vice President Turns a Blind Eye?
Dangwimsai Pul subsequently wrote (on 28 February) to Vice President Hamid Ansari to apprise him of the developments in the Supreme Court and urging him to “consult the other senior judges, and grant permission for registration of an FIR”. In her latest letter to the three judges, she writes that “despite the lapse of almost a month, there is no response from the Vice-President”.
Her letter says that “it does not appear that he has taken any action on my request”.
It requests the three judges to “take an administrative decision of granting sanction of lodging an FIR and having the matter credibly investigated by an SIT”.
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