In a sensational development, the Supreme Court on Wednesday suspended Justice Jayakumar, the judge of a special court for MPs and MLAs cases in Telangana at Nampally court complex, for allegedly going overboard in giving orders in connection with the action against state excise minister V Srinivas Goud.
A couple of weeks ago, Justice Jayakumar gave a judgement directing the Mahabubnagar police to register a first information report (FIR) against Srinivas Goud and nine others in the alleged tampering of the Election Commission of India website to change his affidavit on assets.
The special court judge also pulled up the police for not registering the case despite its earlier orders. After that the Mahabubnagar II Town police registered a case against him and others.
This was challenged in the Supreme Court by the minister. What angered the Supreme Court was that Justice Jayakumar ordered booking of cases against not just minister, but others like former chief election commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar, under secretary to Election Commission of India (ECI) Sanjay Kumar, former chief electoral officer of Telangana Shashank Goel, IAS officer Ronald Rose, revenue divisional officer J Srinivas, IT support team member K Venkatesh Goud, deputy collector-cum-RDO A Padma Shree, collector-cum-district election officer S Venkat Rao and Rajendra Prasad.
The Supreme Court wondered how the judge could drag officials of the Constitutional bodies like state and central election commission. Stating that it was unprecedented, the Supreme Court announced suspension of the judge.
In July, the special court had directed Mahabubnagar II Town police to register a case against Srinivas Goud as per 156 (C) of CrPC and to file cases on the then chief election officer Rajeev Kumar, former Mahabubnagar district collectors Ronald Rose and S Venkata Rao, RDO Srinivas, deputy collector Padmasri, Venkatesh Goud, notary advocate Rajendra Prasad and Danam Sudhakar.
As the police failed to lodge the case, the judge took it seriously as contempt of the court.