Eight former chief justices corrupt, says ex-law minister

In a move that could seriously dent the image of the country’s top judiciary, former law minister Shanti Bhushan has submitted a list of corrupt chief justices (CJ) of the Supreme Court before one of the court’s benches. He identified eight CJs as ‘definitely corrupt’ and six as ‘definitely honest’.

No clear conclusion could be drawn on two others, his submission says. Bhushan’s list of eight allegedly corrupt judges was given to the bench in a sealed envelope.

“Things have changed drastically during the last two to three decades. Corruption in the Indian judiciary has been growing so much that even a sitting CJ had to openly admit that 20% of the judges could be corrupt,’’ Bhushan said. He said there was a time when it was “almost impossible to even think that a judge of a high court or the Supreme Court could be corrupt”.

His list of 16 CJs, among whom he identified the eight “corrupt” ones, contained these names: justices Ranganath Mishra, KN Singh, MH Kania, LM Sharma, MN Venkatachalliah, AM Ahmadi, JS Verma, M Punchhi, AS Anand, SP Bharucha, BN Kirpal, GB Pathak, Rajendra Babu, RC Lahoti, VN Khare and YK Sabharwal.

Bhushan, who sought to implead himself in a case involving his son Prashant, a noted lawyer, said he would consider it a “great honour to spend time in jail’’ for making an effort to get for the people of India an “honest and clean judiciary’’.

“While they were in office, two former CJs had personally told me that their immediate predecessor and immediate successor were corrupt judges,’’ Bhushan said.

Prashant Bhushan is facing contempt proceedings for saying that chief justice SH Kapadia committed a judicial impropriety by being on the forest bench that heard the case of Sterlite Industries, a subsidiary of Vedanta. He made this statement during an interview; justice Kapadia was a senior judge in the apex court at the time.    

Acting on lawyer Harish Salve’s contention that Bhushan’s statements eroded public confidence in the judiciary and “are contemptuous per se,” the court in November last had issued a suo motu contempt notice to Bhushan and Tarun Tejpal, editor of Tehelka. The application said that “in relation to the allegations against justice Kapadia, the respondent (Bhushan) has indulged in half-truths.”

It may be recalled that justice Kapadia had offered to withdraw from the proceedings if any lawyer had an objection to his hearing the matter. But lawyers had none.

The bench of justices Altamas Kabir, Cyriac Joseph and HL Dattu is seized of the matter. It is listed for hearing on November 10.