New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation filed a case of disproportionate assets case against former Allahabad High Court judge Justice S.N. Shukla and his wife, alleging they allegedly amassing assets worth Rs 2.45 crore disproportionate to their known source of income.
The CBI has alleged that the assets was acquired by them between 2015 and 2019, when Shukla was serving on the bench.
In 2019, a case was lodged against Shukla and retired judge of the Chhattisgarh High Court, I.M. Quddusi for getting bribe for a court order which was in favour of a medical college based in Lucknow.
In 2019, them Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra had recommended impeachment of Shukla after a Supreme Court’s in-house probe came against Shukla. However, Shukla wasn’t impeached at that time. Next Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi also favored the impeachment of Shukla.
Now, the CBI has lodged a fresh disproportionate assets case against Shukla and his wife, and in the coming days, can issue summons to him to join the investigation.
Kolkata: Now a Calcutta High Court judge will play the role of an investigator in the multi-crore teachers’ recruitment irregularities scam in West Bengal.
Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay, whose verdict last year prompted central agencies like Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) to probe, will directly question the panel of interviewers in the recruitment of teachers by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC).
His decision on the count has been taken following the complaints by many candidates that the interview process, especially as regards to aptitude test which carries separate marks, was a farce. They alleged that there was no practical test which is an essential part of the aptitude test and many alleged they were relieved of the interview process by the interviews by just asking their and their parents’ names.
In the first phase, Justice Gangopadhyay will interrogate 40 such interviewers in four districts, where such complaints had been maximum. Calcutta High Court sources said that the interrogation process by Justice Gangopadhyay will be very soon and probably during the current month.
The interrogation will be closed-door and the entire proceedings on this count will be in-camera, where none other than the judge, the interviewers and their counsel will be allowed to stay.
Senior High Court counsel Kaushik Gupta said that this is something really unprecedented where a high court judge is playing the role of an investigator. “I have been practicing in the same court for 26 years. I have never heard of such an incident,” he said.
The bulk of the report, including recommendations about potential criminal charges for Trump and his allies, remains under seal.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who opposed release of any portion of the report at this time, said during a court hearing about three weeks ago that her decisions about potential prosecutions were “imminent.” She has not provided a further update.
Trump has denounced the investigation as a political vendetta.
“The long awaited important sections of the Georgia report, which do not even mention President Trump’s name, have nothing to do with the President because President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong,” a spokesperson for the former president said Thursday.
The report underscores the extensive investigation that Willis undertook, noting that the panel heard from 75 witnesses, as well as investigators who helped them comb through voluminous documents related to the probe.
The partial release also makes clear that many grand jurors believe that some of the testimony they heard from witnesses subpoenaed to discuss election-related issues and incidents was false.
“A majority of the grand jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it,” the report says. “ The Grand Jury recommends that the district attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.”
Willis has spent the last year investigating Trump and his allies’ bid to reverse the election results in Georgia, despite losing the state by 11,000 votes. Willis’ probe focused on Trump’s Jan. 2 phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to “find” just enough votes to put Trump ahead of Joe Biden in the state.
Raffensperger declined the request and told Trump that investigators found his claims of fraud to be baseless.
The Trump spokesperson on Thursday defended that call as “perfect” and stressed that there were “many officials and attorneys on the line, including the Secretary of State of Georgia, and no one objected, even slightly protested, or hung up.”
The report underscores the wide-ranging investigation that Willis undertook, noting that the panel heard from 75 witnesses, as well as investigators who helped them comb through voluminous documents related to the probe.
Willis has also pursued evidence about Trump’s broader national effort to subvert the election, calling before the special grand jury top aides like his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, attorney John Eastman and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
Those issues are also the subject of an ongoing federal investigation based in Washington now being headed by special counsel Jack Smith. No charges have yet been brought in that probe.
Under Georgia law, the special grand jury which was sworn in last May could subpoena witnesses and documents, but could not return indictments. Willis would have to seek such charges another, regular grand jury, but can present the evidence and testimony gathered by the special panel.
Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said in a ruling Monday that state law compelled him to publicly release the special grand jury’s findings, although he agreed to defer publishing portions of the report that discuss potential charges against individuals. The special grand jurors had urged the court to make their findings public.
The special grand jury also seemed in its report to seek to assert some independence from Willis’ prosecutors. “That Office had nothing to do with the recommendations contained herein,” the report says, signed by the foreperson and deputy foreperson. The signatures and names of the jury’s leaders were redacted from the excerpts released Thursday.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Hochul, who had continued to push for LaSalle’s confirmation despite opposition, warnings and a committee rejection on Jan. 18, said she will now make a new nomination for Senate consideration from a list provided by the state’s Commission on Judicial Nomination.
“I remain committed to selecting a qualified candidate to lead the court and deliver justice,” she said in a statement. “That is what New Yorkers deserve.”
The governor painted Wednesday’s vote — though not in her favor — as “an important victory from the constitution,” but added that it was “not a vote on the merits of Justice LaSalle, who is an overwhelmingly qualified and talented jurist.”
Stewart-Cousins and her Senate counterparts expressed exasperation with the four weeks of waiting for Hochul to accept their determination after the 19-member Judiciary Committee rejected LaSalle in January. The outcome was the same, they said during floor debate on Wednesday, and both branches of government lost time and energy during weeks typically spent negotiating the $227 billion budget proposal for the fiscal year that starts April 1.
“All this did, frankly, was underscore the value of the committee process and illustrate why it makes sense,” Stewart-Cousins said.
Hochul continued to push for LaSalle’s confirmation following the Judiciary Committee’s rejection, saying that the state constitution required consideration from the full 63-member body. She threatened legal action, though never laid out any specific details.
Senate Republicans ultimately did it for her with a lawsuit in Suffolk County last week to try and force a full floor vote. So Stewart-Cousins ordered the full Senate vote on Wednesday. She maintained that the committee vetting process was the appropriate channel for the nomination, but a lawsuit would only prolong the vacancy at the top of the Court of Appeals following Janet DiFiore’s resignation last summer.
The Senate is eager to vet a new candidate, she told reporters, but her conference is looking for a “visionary leader” and has now shown that it will be rigorous in its scrutiny.
The political play highlighted for the first time the Senate supermajority’s willingness to wield its power over Hochul, who is in her first year of a four-year term after she succeeded Gov. Andrew Cuomo when he resigned in 2021. It could signal an even rockier road ahead for the governor as she searches for her stride in legislative relations.
Hochul and Stewart-Cousins had a “cordial conversation” preceding the vote, Stewart-Cousins said, though they did not discuss what the governor “learned or didn’t learn” from the experience.
“We both believe what we believe, but we also both understand the importance of being able to tackle the issue at hand, which again, is the budget, and we know that it is important that we work together, and we are committed to doing that,” she said.
No Democrats have emerged happy from the monthslong ordeal, but Senate Republicans are taking some credit for getting the process moving. The question that emerged had been whether the full Senate was required to vote on LaSalle or could the issue end with the vote in the Judiciary Committee, as Democrats contended.
“But for Senate Republicans and but for Senator (Anthony) Palumbo’s lawsuit, this doesn’t happen today. Governor Hochul didn’t do anything to make it happen,” Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt told reporters following the vote. Ortt maintained that a full floor vote was necessary for members of his conference to have a say in the nomination that they wouldn’t otherwise get from the Judiciary Committee, where Democrats control the outcome.
“We brought a lawsuit … and I’m glad we did, because today was a victory for democracy, for the Constitution, and for the rule of law,” he said.
The lawsuit — though based on the specific circumstances surrounding getting the LaSalle nomination to a floor vote — will continue, he said. The first court date in Suffolk County is set for Friday.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Donald Trump missed his chance to use his DNA to try to prove he did not rape the writer E Jean Carroll, a federal judge said on Wednesday, clearing a potential roadblock to an April trial.
The judge, Lewis A Kaplan, rejected the 11th-hour offer by Trump’s legal team to provide a DNA sample to rebut claims Carroll first made publicly in a 2019 book.
Kaplan said lawyers for Trump and Carroll had more than three years to make DNA an issue in the case and both chose not to do so.
He said it would almost surely delay the trial scheduled to start on 25 April to reopen the DNA issue four months after the deadline passed to litigate concerns over trial evidence and weeks before trial.
Trump’s lawyers did not immediately comment. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, declined to comment.
Carroll’s lawyers have sought Trump’s DNA for three years to compare it with stains found on the dress Carroll wore the day she says Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in late 1995 or early 1996. Analysis of DNA on the dress concluded it did contain traces of an unknown man’s DNA.
Trump has denied knowing Carroll, saying repeatedly he never raped her and accusing her of making the claim to stoke sales of her book. She has sued him for defamation and under a New York law which allows alleged victims of sexual assault to sue over alleged crimes outside the usual statute of limitations.
After refusing to provide a DNA sample, Trump’s lawyers switched tactics, saying they would provide one if Carroll’s lawyers turned over the full DNA report on the dress.
But Kaplan said Trump had provided no persuasive reason to relieve him of the consequences of his failure to seek the full DNA report in a timely fashion.
The judge also noted that the report did not find evidence of sperm cells and that reopening the dispute would raise a “complicated new subject into this case that both sides elected not to pursue over a period of years”.
He said a positive match of Trump’s DNA to that on the dress would prove only that there had been an encounter between Trump and Carroll on a day when she wore the dress, but would not prove or disprove that a rape occurred and might prove entirely inconclusive.
Kaplan added: “His conditional invitation to open a door that he kept closed for years threatens to change the nature of a trial for which both parties now have been preparing for years. Whether Mr Trump’s application is intended for a dilatory purpose or not, the potential prejudice to Ms Carroll is apparent.”
The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.
The Carroll case is just one source of legal jeopardy for Trump, who is now one of two candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
He also faces an investigation of a hush money payment to a porn star who claims an affair, investigations of his financial and tax affairs, investigations of his election subversion attempts, and investigation of his retention of classified records.
Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 802 9999. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Mysuru: An incident of a judge bringing together an aged couple in Mysuru district of Karnataka during a mega Lok Adalat programme has been appreciated by one and all.
The couple, a 75-year-old man and his 70-year-old wife were married for 35 years and lived in Mysuru city. They had three daughters out of wedlock. After growing up, all three got married to persons of their choice.
But, the man disapproved of their conduct and did not come to terms with his daughters. He blamed and criticised his wife for their daughters move.
The wife tried to calm him down, telling him that the marriages had been solemnised and nothing could be done about it now. The man did not relent and applied for divorce in the family court.
Principal District and Sessions Judge G.S. Sangreshi counselled the couple in the mega Lok Adalat programme held on February 11 and convinced the man not to have bitter feelings at his age towards his wife. The man agreed and took back his petition seeking divorce.
The judge stated that 36 couples who had applied for divorce agreed to take back their petitions and unite.
New York: Indian-American judge Vince Chhabria has slapped a fine of almost $1 million on Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and its law firm for creating obstacles for court and users in a data breach trial.
According to a Bloomberg report, District Judge Chhabria wrote in an order that the fine is “loose change” for Facebook and Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP for deceitfully denying that it shared users’ private information with third parties.
The San Francisco judge said that Facebook relied on “delay, misdirection, and frivolous arguments” to make the litigation unfairly difficult and expensive. “Perhaps realising they had no real argument for withholding these documents, Facebook and Gibson Dunn contorted various statements” of opposing lawyers and the court acebeyond recognition,” Chhabria wrote, according to Bloomberg.
“And again, after being told repeatedly that these arguments made no sense, Facebook and Gibson Dunn insisted on pressing them,” he said.
The judge added that Facebook also attempted to push the users, who had filed a complaint against it, into settling for a lesser compensation.
The lawsuit was filed in a California court on behalf of Facebook users impacted by Meta’s partnership with research firm Cambridge Analytica.
The $925,078.51 penalty comes after Meta had agreed a $725 million settlement in December 2022 to resolve a class-action lawsuit, which claimed that Facebook illegally shared user data with Cambridge Analytica.
In March 2018, whistleblower Christopher Wylie publicly revealed that Cambridge Analytica exfiltrated personal data of 87 million Facebook users in the US in order to influence the results of the 2016 US presidential election.
This data trove included Facebook users’ ages, interests, pages they liked, groups they followed, physical locations, political and religious affiliations, relationships, and photos, as well as their full names, phone numbers, and email addresses.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis indicated last month that decisions on whether to charge any subjects of her investigation are “imminent.” Her year-long probe into whether Trump violated Georgia election law — in part by urging Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to reverse the outcome — featured extensive efforts to compel testimony form some of Trump’s top White House and campaign advisers, as well as his outside lawyers.
Dispite Willis’ preferences on timing, McBurney said he had to prioritize the public’s right to know about at least the general findings of the probe into alleged efforts to tamper with the 2020 election results.
“While publication may not be convenient for the pacing of the district attorney’s investigation, the compelling public interest in these proceedings and the unquestionable value and importance of transparency require their release,” McBurney wrote in his eight-page order.
A spokesperson for Willis did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the judge’s order and whether she will seek to appeal it.
McBurney ruled that aspects of the report that recommend whether to indict — or not indict — specific individuals should remain private for now in part because those individuals are not afforded the same due process rights during the grand jury process they would have in court if they’re charged.
While witnesses were permitted to have their lawyers nearby during the grand-jury proceedings, those lawyers were not permitted to sit in on the interviews to help mount a defense or rebut questions from prosecutors and grand jurors.
Willis’ office got court approval for the special grand jury investigation last January and impaneled the actual jury in May.
The probe stems in large part from a phone call Trump held with Raffensperger on Jan. 3, 2021, asking him to locate more than additional 11,000 votes for Trump so that he could be deemed the victor over Joe Biden in the state. Raffensperger and other state officials repeatedly told Trump they’d looked into allegations he’d made of fraud and hidden stashes ballots, but found nothing to support them.
While the Georgia officials stood firm, a recording of the call indicates Trump continued to press, largely ignoring their explanations.
But the probe significantly broadened over time to focus on Trump’s larger effort to subvert the 2020 election, in part by pushing allies in several states to deliver false sets of presidential electors to Washington. Among the witnesses Willis compelled to appear in Fulton County: Rudy Giuliani, Mike Flynn, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Mark Meadows, all of whom lost court battles to resist her summons.
Many legal analysts have said the call could amount to an illegal attempt to tamper with the election results, although Trump has described the call as “perfect.” The special grand jury also explored efforts other Trump supporters made to urge recounts or decertification of the election results in the days before Congress met to tally the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump’s lawyers did not seek to intervene in the litigation over releasing the special grand jury’s report. The former president’s attorneys issued a statement last month saying they assumed the investigative body recommended no charges since it never subpoenaed him or sought a voluntary interview.
Trump’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a request Monday for comment on the judge’s new order.
Under Georgia law, special grand juries cannot return indictments, but their results can be used by prosecutors to take a case before a regular grand jury to seek criminal charges.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
New Delhi: A matter related to the Jamia Nagar violence was on Monday transferred to another court after a sessions judge, who had recently discharged 11 accused including student activist Sharjeel Imam in another case linked to the 2019 incident, recused himself.
Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Arul Varma on Friday withdrew himself from hearing a case in connection with the violence in Jamia Nagar in December 2019. The case was registered against several people, including student activist Asif Iqbal Tanha.
The matter is likely to be heard by Additional Sessions Judge Sonu Agnihotri on March 18, a source said.
Earlier, citing personal reasons ASJ Varma had requested the Principal District and Sessions Judge of the Saket Court here to transfer the case.
The accused in the present case include Tanha, Meeran Haider, Ashu Khan, Qasim Usmani, Mohammad Hassan, Mohd Jamal, Mohd Sahil Muddassir, Faheem Hasmee, Sameer Ahmad, Mohd Umar, Mohd Adil, Roohul Ameer, Chandan Kumar and Saqib Khan.
The Jamia Nagar police station had registered an FIR in connection with the violence that erupted after a clash between police and people protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
ASJ Varma, while discharging the accused, including Iman, had rapped the police, saying as they were unable to apprehend the actual perpetrators, the 11 accused were booked as “scapegoats”.
