Conspiracy To Frame CJI - The 'Ifs And Buts' In Lawyer Utsav Bains' Story

With the Supreme Court in-house committee giving a clean chit to Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi in the sexual harassment case levelled by a former court employee, all eyes would now be on Justice A. K. Patnaik who as of last week has commenced the task of examining Bains' contentions (which Senior Counsel Indira Jaising had called a defence action against the sexual harassment allegations).

Jolted into action by the evidence adduced by Bains in a sealed cover on April 24 in support of his affidavit, the bench headed by Justice Mishra had immediately convened an in-chamber meeting with the chiefs of the IB, the CBI and the Delhi Police (who are to assist Justice Patnaik in the court-ordered probe). Subsequently, Bains has filed two additional affidavits, both in sealed covers.

The first of Bains' affidavits, and the lone which is available in public domain, avers about Jet Airways' Naresh Goyal's alleged attempt to bribe the CJI through one Romesh Sharma, a "fixer", to get "a favorable order to Jet Airways and to order the Government to waive off its losses". Bains has contended that Sharma and his "cash-for-judgment" aides were already upset with CJ Gogoi for cracking down on their racket on assuming office in October last year. It is his claim that Sharma was introduced to Goyal by United Nations Security Council designated terrorist Dawood Ibrahim who supposedly has invested money in Jet Airways. Bains also mentions that a corporate figure (who he does not name), who had unsuccessfully tried to approach an apex court judge to procure a favourable order in a high-profile case and then also failed in having the matter transferred from the court of said judge, had "ganged up" with Sharma to frame the CJI in a false case of sexual harassment to compel him to resign, post which the other judge on account of whose judgment the corporate figure incurred huge losses would be targeted. He has advanced that in addition to the links between Goyal, Ibrahim, Sharma and the said corporate figure, some "disgruntled employees" and "former employees" of the Supreme Court have also joined forces in the conspiracy. 

Ever since he chose to surface, Bains' bonafides have been the backdrop on which successive question-marks have been put- while Ms. Jaising requested Justices Mishra, Rohinton Nariman and Deepak Gupta to investigate his credentials along with his averments , veteran lawyer Prashant Bhushan reportedly suggested that Bains had met with the CJ twice before filing his affidavit.  Besides expressing wonderment at how Bains had managed to enter the court premises in a white Jaguar taxi without the SC sticker and park it in the space allotted to the AG, Ms. Jaising had also urged the court to require him to file a sworn affidavit that he is not connected to any of the parties involved in the controversy (to which Bains had asserted in open court that despite rumours that say otherwise, he has no relations with the CJI). Senior Advocate Nina Gupta Bhasin has apparently recounted that on April 22 in the afternoon she had witnessed Bains' taxi being allowed inside the gates after the security guards verified over the phone that Bains was called in by some "sir". "Later that night, the Supreme Court registry notified that his affidavit was listed for hearing the next morning at 10:30 a.m. before a special bench...This was strange as the registry normally does not accept an affidavit without an application," Mr. Bhushan has said.

In court, AG K. K. Venugopal had drawn the bench's attention to certain portions of Bains's affidavit to show what he described as a "significant departure". While in his Facebook post on April 20 at 6.50 PM, he said that he will file an affidavit with evidence of "conspiracy against the CJI by a lobby of disgruntled judges, SC fixers, corporate scamsters and a few corrupt Politicians - All who have meticulously planned the conspiracy to force the CJI to resign as their corrupt works were not going through in SC", the AG indicated that Bains' affidavit filed in the court has no mention of the alleged lobby of disgruntled judges and corrupt politicians.

Countering Bains' claim of privilege in respect of certain communications which he had been reluctant to disclose, the AG had said, "I don't understand how one can give an affidavit, produce half the evidence and say that rest is confidential? And if Your Lordships want his cellphone, [unclear]...(earlier in the day the bench had asked Bains if he had his mobile on him to which Bains had replied that that was his private phone while the others were at his residence)"

A fact that has stood out, and been echoed from several quarters, is the uncanny timing of Bains' emergence on the scene immediately a day after the ex-SC staffer had circulated a letter of her allegations among the judges on April 19. Within hours of an urgent hearing being convened in the top court on April 20 (which was a Saturday) where the stand adopted was that the sexual harassment claim was a part of a larger plot against the independence of the judiciary, Bains put up the Facebook post saying that on April 4, he was approached with a bribe of Rs. 50 lakhs (which was hiked to 1.5 crores in the same meeting) by one Ajay, who introduced himself as a relative of the former woman employee, to represent her and to hold a press conference specifically at the Press Club of India to frame the CJI in a false case of sexual harassment.