In a shocking allegation that is sure to shake the country’s judicial establishments, former Union law minister Shanti Bhushan on Thursday has claimed in his affidavit before the Supreme Court that out of 16 Chief Justices of India the country has had, at least six were corrupt.
The former law minister made the statement through an affidavit filed before the Supreme Court on Thursday. He also mentioned in the affidavit that six out of the 16 CJIs were “definitely honest”.
Mr Bhushan in the affidavit, based on his research, also revealed the identities of the judges he alleged were corrupt before the apex court. The affidavit also categorises the judges as “definitely corrupt”, “definitely honest” in a sealed cover. Talking to this newspaper, Mr Bhushan said, “I have filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court regarding the corrupt judges in the Indian judiciary.”
He, however, has refused to share further details in the matter.
The former minister, while exposing the identity of the CJIs, also said that since he was saying it so publicly he should be made to face contempt of court proceedings and could be made a party to the case in which his son Prashant Bhushan, a Supreme Court lawyer, too was facing contempt proceedings. Prashant Bhushan is facing contempt proceedings for saying that the incumbent Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia committed a judicial impropriety by being on the forest bench that heard the Sterlite Industries matter. The former law minister, while saying that he should face contempt of court if his allegations against CJIs are found to be wrong, also reiterated that he would consider it as an honour to spend some time in jail for making an effort to get the people of India an “honest and clean judiciary”. The senior counsel said that since the question arising in this case affects the judiciary, the petition “needs to be decided by the entire court and not merely by three judges”.
The affidavit claims that two former CJIs had personally told Bhushan that their immediate predecessors and immediate successors were corrupt judges. He said that the names of those four CJIs were included in the list of eight “corrupt” CJIs. The senior counsel said that there was a time when it was “almost impossible even to think that a judge of a high court or the Supreme Court could be corrupt”.