HC asks police chief to probe heckling of lawyers inside court
The Statesman | 3 May 2025
The Calcutta High Court on Friday directed Manoj Verma, commissioner of Kolkata Police (KP) to probe the incident of defacing judge’s photo and heckling lawyers inside the court premises.
The HC has also instructed the city police chief to identify those involved in the incident.
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Today, a special Bench of Justice Arijit Bandyopadhyay, Justice Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj while hearing the case asked the KP to submit an inquiry report to the court.
The Bench has also observed that the incident amounts to criminal contempt of court at the initial stage and this should not happen again in future. This kind of act is done to disrupt the judiciary, it is also observed.
It has also directed to serve notices to 15 jobseekers including Raju Das and the Trinamul Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh. The registrar general of the HC has been asked by the court to ensure the matter in connection with serving the notices.
“We have gone through the material which have so far been brought on record, including the affidavits of persons who were present at the scene of occurrence. Prima facie, we are of the view that criminal contempt has been committed in this case by interfering administration of justice and scandalising the judiciary,” the court said.
The next hearing of the case will be held again on 19 May.
The HC on Monday had instructed the city police to identify those involved in the heckling of lawyers inside the court premises.
Earlier on Friday, lawyers Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya and Firdous Shamim, representing those qualified in the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) exams of 2016 were allegedly deprived of employment in the cash-for-jobs scam, were heckled by protesters.
“If they are unhappy with the verdict they can always file an appeal. Protests cannot be held in this manner. Those involved would have to be identified,” said Chief Justice T S Sivagnanam, when the matter came up for hearing on 28 April.
The matter had come up for hearing in the Bench of Justice Biswajit Basu. After the hearing concluded the protests had started. The protesters defaced Justice Basu’s picture.
Police had remained silent witnesses while the lawyers were abused and gheraoed,” said an advocate.
The incident was brought to the notice of the Chief Justice.
Some of the protesters had demanded that the case on the supernumerary candidates would have to be withdrawn.
Earlier in April, the Supreme Court had upheld a Calcutta HC division Bench verdict scrapping the entire panel of teachers and non-teaching staff who had appeared in the 2016 school service commission examination for the posts of assistant teachers, group C and D employees in government-aided schools across West Bengal.
The chief minister Mamata Banerjee had also blamed lawyer Mr Bhattacharya and Abhijit Ganguly, former judge of the Calcutta High Court turned BJP MP from Tamluk for the court judgment which had described the recruitment process as vitiated.