BHOPAL: The state government on Friday presented a status report on the four points relating to security arrangements for judges during hearing of a suo motu petition taken up by the high court following an incident of manhandling of a judge in Mandsaur.
The division bench of Justice Prakash Shrivastava and Justice Virendra Singh, while asking for distribution of copies of the government's reply to all the parties in the case, said that following the Jharkhand incident, the issue of judges' security has become all the more important.
On July 23, 2016, Rajvardhan Gupta, a judge posted at Mandsaur was manhandled on the national highway. Following preliminary inquiry into the incident, which prima facie confirmed the incident, the then registrar general of MP high court, Manohar Mamtani, had given a report to the then acting chief justice Rajendra Menon. Taking the incident seriously despite directives given in the past for provisions to avert such incidents, the court had taken up the issue as a suo motu petition.
During the previous hearing, the court had sought the state government's response on the proposal to erect boundary walls of adequate height around the court buildings, setting up of police posts on the court premises, security arrangements in courts and residential premises of judges. The state government presented a status report on these issues on Friday. Advocate, Suyash Thakur appeared in the case as an intervener.
