Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court, Justice Aravind Kumar, paid a surprise visit to Ahmedabad to see the workings of lower courts while judges of the City Civil Court were caught off guard.
Sources said, Justice Arvind Kumar, dressed in a trouser and a shirt minus his usual protocol retinue visited the city court complex at 3.40 pm on October 22.
Justice Aravind Kumar, who took over as the chief justice of the Gujarat high court recently, kept his visit to the city civil court under wraps and did not even disclose his proposed visit even to his staff.
“He left the High court accompanied by his usual police escort for the city civil court but dumped his police escort and official car a mile from the court. Thereafter, to prevent any word from getting out that he was visiting the city civil court, he took an autorickshaw and travelled in it to the court premises,” said registrar (inspection) Gujarat High Court, JL Odedra.
When the judge entered the court compound, he was appalled to find that the security check at the court was lax. According to sources, there was hardly any security check at the entrance of the court premises which ought to have been done especially in the back drop of Dhanbad and Delhi shoot out in the court room recently.
The Chief justice was further shocked when he discovered that at 3.50 pm, five senior judges of the court were not in their courtrooms even though the normal working hours of the court were till 5 pm.
Thereafter, Justice Aravind Kumar went to the court room of the principal session judge, which was doing judicial work. He sat in the court room wearing a mask so that he would not discovered.
The five judges have been issued a warning memo by the Chief Justice. They have been advised to be in their courtrooms till 5 pm.
Though it is not a usual practice of conducting a surprise visit to trial courts by the chief justices or judges of the high courts, in past, judges of the high courts have employed this trick to keep abreast of workings of the lower courts and judicial officers.
Few years ago, a similar surprise inspection of lower courts in Delhi was done by the acting chief justice of the Delhi high court Gita Mittal and other judges. It was found that many judicial officers were missing from their court rooms at 10 am, which is the usual time to judicial work to begin.
Lower courts in Gujarat have been reeling under heavy pendency of judicial cases. According to data available of the National Judicial Grid, there are over 20 lakh cases – over 4.6 lakh civil cases and 15.3 criminal case- pending as of date in the state.
Ahmedabad, has a total pendency of 5.48 lakh cases, of which 97,000 are civil cases and 4.51 lakh are criminal cases.