Judge recuses in Sahara case

New Delhi: In a fresh controversial development concerning the Sahara Group, Supreme Court judge Justice J.S. Khehar has recused himself from hearing the case of the Group’s failure to refund thousands of crores of rupees raised illegally.

On May 6, Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan along with Justice Khehar had denied bail to the Group chief Subrata Roy, who has been in jail since March 4.

In the verdict, the judges had stated that they faced tremendous pressure while dealing with the case. They had also slammed Mr Roy’s plea seeking their recusal from hearing the case.

An official at the apex court told reporters on Thursday that on May 6 Justice Khehar had himself written to Chief Justice of India R.M. Lodha seeking recusal from the matter and a new bench was constituted for the same on May 7 by the CJI.

Justice Khehar also told the registry that in future, no matter pertaining to any Sahara Group company should be placed before a bench of which he is part.

A new bench has been constituted as Justice Radhakrishnan, who was hearing the matter along with Justice Khehar, retired on May 14.
On Thursday, the SC official did not disclose the details of the new bench which will now hear the petitions relating to Sahara Group.
In a strongly-worded judgement, the bench had come down heavily on the Group for “systematically” frustrating and flouting all its orders with impunity on refunding investors’ money.

It had said the Group “adopted a demeanour of defiance constituting a rebellious behaviour, not amenable to the rule of law” and justified its decision to send Mr Roy along with two promoters of Sahara companies to jail.

The bench had said that it started adopting sequentially harsher means to persuade compliance of its order on refunding money leading to Mr Roy’s detention after all the efforts to “cajole” the two companies and the petitioner were “methodically circumvented.”

“Calculated psychological offensives and mind games adopted to seek recusal of judges, need to be strongly repulsed. We deprecate such tactics and commend a similar approach to other courts, when they experience such behaviour,” it had said. Mr Roy, 65, has been in jail since March 4 for non-refund of over Rs 20,000 crore to depositors.