The next hearing will be on 19 May in the Delhi high court case filed by Swatanter Kumar against three media companies and an NUJS Kolkata graduate, who alleged the former Supreme Court judge had sexually harrassed her while she interned with him, reported the PTI.
Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw said yesterday: “Pleadings shall be complete within four weeks from today. Rejoinder/replication shall be filed three weeks thereafter. Fix it for hearing on May 19.”
The intern has filed written statement in sealed cover and the respondent newspaper publisher and two TV station owners have also filed their replies to the petition, according to the PTI.
The PTI reported that the Delhi high court had passed an order on 16 January 2014 that everyone would only be allowed to report on the allegations against Kumar if it was made clear that they were mere allegations.
Furthermore, the PTI wrote that the three defendants were ordered to delete “offending” contents and Kumar's photograph from their websites:
The court had said adverse publicity against judges should be "handled with care and caution" as it may prejudice people's faith in the higher judiciary.
"The defendants (three media houses and woman law intern), their agents, assigns or any of them acting on their behalf and/or any other person, entity, in print or electronic media or internet are:
"Restrained from further publishing the write-ups as mentioned ... Of the documents file or publishing any article or write-up and telecast which highlights the allegations against the plaintiff in the form of headlines connecting or associating plaintiff with those allegations, particularly, without disclosing in the headlines of article that they are mere allegations against the plaintiff or any other similar nature of articles, write-up and telecast," it had said in the interim order.
Besides the law intern, two English news channels and an English daily were made parties by Justice Kumar.
The court had asked them to delete the "offending" contents and the photograph of Justice Kumar from "internet or other electronic media" within 24 hours and file a compliance report within a week.
The next hearing in the PIL filed by the intern against Kumar and the Supreme Court, in which she has asked the apex court to investigate her allegations and institute a permanent mechanism to hear similar complaints against judges, has been fixed for 26 March.
[Full disclosure: Legally India was served with a legal notice by Kumar's lawyers in January claiming that third parties were prohibited from publishing Kumar's photo.]
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There seems to be a grammatical error in the first paragraph of the article. Correct the same before a hullabaloo of trolls find a way to this forum as well.
For the trolls' benefit, this was the original lead:
Quote:
No insinuations meant whatsoever....
This is what happened in Court.
The suit was listed before Judge Rajiv Sahai Endlaw and not Judge Manmohan Singh.
Counsel for the intern appeared and sought time to file a written statement and an application for vacation of stay. The court was informed that further time was being sought because the intern is not based in Delhi. The counsel for the intern sought leave to file her affidavits in sealed cover in order to protect her identity.
Counsel for Indian Express (Nachiket Joshi) stated that his client had filed a written statement, a reply to the application under order 39, rules 1 and 2 and a separate application for vacation of stay under order 39 rule 4.
Very surprisingly, with no such plea being taken by anyone, Judge Rajiv Sahai Endlaw’s response to the statement by the counsel for Indian Express was to state: that since Swatanter Kumar’s application under order 39 rules 1 and 2 was still pending, the application filed by Indian Express under order 39 rule 4 could not have been filed. This is incorrect law as an application for vacation of stay under order 39 rule 4 can be filed even if the stay granted is ad-interim.
No one objected to this suo moto mis-statement of law by Judge Rajiv Sahai Endlaw who then proceeded to direct that Indian Express’ application for vacation of stay would be treated as the reply to Swatanter Kumar’s application for stay and that the application for vacation of stay filed by Indian Express would be treated as disposed off. This was a legally wrong direction by Judge Rajiv Sahai Endlaw but surprisingly counsel for Indian Express did not object.
At the request of Counsel for Times Now, the memo of parties was partially corrected to add the entity that runs the Times Now channel, however its application to delete Bennet Coleman (which owns the entity that runs Times Now) was kept pending and notice was issued on it.
Counsel for Times Now filed something in sealed cover but it was not clear during the hearing as to what this was.
Counsel for CNN-IBN also sought some correction in the memo of parties and Turner was deleted as apparently it has no connection to CNN-IBN. A name change of the company that owns CNN-IBN was also made.
The matter was suddenly taken up at an unusual time, when it was already past 1.20 and the lunch break had started. The board outside had been displaying item 12, then the board stopped displaying the item numbers and this matter was suddenly taken up.
Various parties were directed to file their pleadings and the matter was first adjourned to 19 May but Mr A S Chandhiok mentioned the matter at 2.30 and the date for the next hearing was changed to 7 May. The counsels for the intern were present when the matter was mentioned for a date change but the counsels for the media respondents were not present.
I am concerned about collusion between the media respondents or their counsels and the counsels for Swatanter Kumar and Swatanter Kumar.
I also told Vrinda Grover appearing for the intern that if I was advising the intern I would recommend that she publicly name herself and not remain anonymous because by being anonymous she was making it possible for her to be targeted and several persons who would publicly support her could not do so.
Stella James received wide support because she made her identity public.
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