The Madras High Court on Tuesday directed the Home Secretary and Director General of Police to ensure that Facebook, Google and YouTube block access to around 12 videos in which its former judge C.S. Karnan could be seen abusing some Supreme Court as well as High Court judges and their spouses using "vituperative and vulgar" language.
A Division Bench of Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and R. Hemalatha passed the interim order on a writ petition filed by Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (BCTNP) seeking initiation of criminal as well as other legal action against the former judge on the basis of several complaints lodged with the police.
In their order, the judges said: "It is rather unfortunate to note that the 9th respondent, who held an important constitutional post, had gone down to such a level and had been repeatedly making scandalous, vituperative, obscene and unparliamentary utterances against some former and sitting judges, their family members, female staff of the High Court and women lawyers."
They agreed with senior counsel S. Prabakaran, who was also the co-chairman of Bar Council of India, that the act of the former judge prima facie amounted to commission of cognizable offences under the Indian Penal Code and the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal] Act of 2013.
The Bench also directed the Home Secretary, DGP and the Greater Chennai Commissioner of Police to file individual counter affidavits explaining the reasons for not having set the law in motion despite several women lawyers as well as others having lodged complaints against the former judge for having used such vulgar language. Justice Sathyanarayanan made it clear that the affidavits should be filed by the officers concerned and not by others in representative capacity.
Earlier, arguing the case on behalf of the BCTNP, Mr. Prabakaran said the police ought to have arrested the former judge for his incessant rants, using undesirable language, in the videos that were being circulated on the social media one after the other. "I don't know how such a person held an office as high as that of a High Court judge. He has been making sexually coloured remarks without sparing even the spouses of honourable judges," the counsel said.
