Ex-Calcutta HC Judge Karnan Released from Jail After 6-Month Term

Karnan was released after serving a 6-month jail sentence, handed out to him by the Supreme Court for contempt.

Justice CS Karnan. 

(Photo: PTI)

Former Calcutta High Court judge CS Karnan was released from jail on Wednesday, 20 December, after serving a six-month sentence which was handed out to him by the Supreme Court for contempt.

Karnan was arrested from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu on 20 June by the West Bengal CID officials after he evaded the police for over a month.

Earlier on Tuesday, his wife Saraswati Karnan, who resides in Chennai, told PTI over the phone:

He (Karnan) is scheduled to be released tomorrow. I am coming to Kolkata to accompany him back to Chennai.

aswati Ka

"I found him in good spirits and health," she said.

Saraswati Karnan, a professor of economics in a Chennai college, said she had last met her husband at the Presidency Correctional Home in Kolkata a month-and-a-half ago.

Karnan's counsel Mathew J Nedumpara also released a statement on Tuesday, in which he said:

It is a matter of great pleasure, nay, relief, that Justice Karnan will be released from Presidency Jail, Kolkata, tomorrow, on the completion of six months of imprisonment.

Mathew J Nedumpara, Karnan’s counsel

Karnan – The First Sitting HC Judge to be Sentenced to Jail

Karnan had earned the dubious distinction of becoming the first sitting High Court judge to have been sentenced to jail.

The apex court had sentenced him to six months in jail for contempt of court on 9 May. Karnan was a serving judge of the Calcutta High Court at that time.

A seven-judge bench of the Supreme Court, headed by then Chief Justice of India JS Khehar, had asked the West Bengal director general of police (DGP) to take Karnan, who was on a warpath with the apex court for months, into custody.

The Supreme Court had earlier issued a bailable warrant against the judge to secure his presence before it in connection with the contempt case.

Karnan had appeared before the apex court on 31 March, a first in the country's judicial history, and asked for restoration of his powers as a precondition for his reappearance, but the plea was rejected.

Karnan, who had enrolled as an advocate with the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu in 1983, was appointed a judge of the Madras High Court in 2009. He was transferred to the Calcutta High Court on 11 March 2016.

He was transferred from the Madras High Court for his repeated allegations against and run-ins with the then chief justice and fellow judges of the court.

(WIth inputs from PTI and IANS)