Date:28/08/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/08/28/stories/2008082859990500.htm

New Delhi

Three-judge panel to go into ‘cash-at-judge door’ scam

New Delhi: Taking a serious view of the ‘cash-at-judge door’ scam in Chandigarh, Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan has constituted a three-judge committee to go into it even as a parallel CBI probe has been recommended.

Justice Hemant Lakshman Gokhle (Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court), Justice K S Radhakrishnan (Chief Justice of Jammu and Kashmir High Court) and Justice Madan B Lokur (Delhi High Court) will probe the incident in which Rs. 15 lakh was taken by the clerk of a senior Haryana law officer to the residence of a judge of Punjab and Haryana High Court.

Later it turned out that the money was meant for another judge. Justice Nirmal Yadav of the Punjab and Haryana High Court last week recused from judicial work after her name surfaced during the interrogation of the three accused in connection with the case. She is now on leave.

Meanwhile, Punjab Governor S F R Rodrigues, who is also Chandigarh Administrator, has recommended a CBI probe into the scam after consultations with High Court Chief Justice Tirath Singh Thakur, a report from Chandigarh said.

“After receiving a report from Chief Justice Tirath Singh Thakur of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the CJI constituted the committee comprising two Chief Justices and a Judge of the High Court as he felt that deeper probe was needed in the alleged scam,” apex court sources said. Justice Thakur had also met CJI and discussed the matter in which the name of a sitting judge has surfaced in the scam, the sources said. He said no deadline has been fixed for the submission of the report and the inquiry by the committee will not come in the way of investigation by police. -- PTI