Above: Delhi High Court/Photo: Anil Shakya

On December 22, the bench of Justice Valmiki Mehta and Indermeet Kaur of Delhi High Court had issued notice for criminal contempt to Additional District Judge Kamini Lau at the Tis Hazari Court. In its order, the bench said the reason was that “her averments tend to scandalize or lower the authority of the court”.

On Monday (January 15), Lau challenged her contempt notice in the Supreme Court. The bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud listed the matter before a bench which do not comprise of Justice Khanwilkar.

The Delhi High Court bench, in its order, had said: “…whereas we have already reproduced four orders passed by the learned Single Judge of this Court to show that each of the orders reflect correct judicial observations having been made by the learned Single Judge… against the four impugned judgments and the orders passed by the applicant/judicial officer which are subject matters of the four RFAs. We found it unbelievable and unacceptable that the applicant/judicial officer has crossed all norms of acceptable behaviour and made personal allegations against the learned Single Judge… including stating that the learned Single Judge of this Court is selectively targeting the applicant/judicial officer.”

Judge Lau had not taken lightly to a comment by the Single judge of the Delhi High Court, on four cases where she had directed sale deeds to be returned, but the single judge had differed. In his judgment on the ADJ’s directive, he had mentioned: “…Such a finding can have vast repercussions leading to rendering the securities held by all the banks not worth the paper they are engrossed on and the learned Additional District Judge ought not to have returned such a finding in a casual manner.

“A copy of the impugned judgment along with a copy of this order be placed before the Committee of Inspecting Judges of this Court of the learned Additional District Judge.”

—India Legal Bureau