KOCHI: Kerala High Court Administrative Council has filed a charge sheet against Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate N V Raju for his failure in recording statements of Solar case accused Saritha S Nair.
The magistrate had bypassed certain stipulations to do this. If the accused had something to say, the magistrate’s failure to record it is a serious breach of law, says the charge sheet.
The court also instructed Raju to file his reply within 15 days, after which it will take further action.
On July 20, 2013, when Saritha appeared before Ernakulam Ravipuram court dealing with financial crimes, she had told Magistrate Raju that she had something to depose before him secretly.
After this, on the same day noon, the magistrate listened to Saritha for about 20 minutes in a court room with shut doors but the magistrate didn’t make any jottings of the secret statements. Later he reportedly asked Saritha to write down her statements and give it to him.
Though the reports came that Saritha had mentioned the names of several ministers in her statement, the magistrate later told the Magistrate court that Saritha’s statements were a bundle of lies. This had also become controversial.
After Magistrate disagreed to record Saritha’s statement, Advocate Jayashankar and BJP leader K Surendran filed a complaint at the High Court. Following this, High Court Vigilance Registrar conducted a preliminary investigation and he submitted a report that there was substance in complaint against Raju. The high court then appointed the Administrative Council of judges for further inquiry. But even after six months, the charge sheet was not submitted.
In between this, Raju got promoted as Chief Judcial Magistrate and was transferred to Kasargod.
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