FIRs Against Sitting Judges: The Veeraswami Case

Key Points

• 1Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar sought an FIR against Justice Yashwant Varma and called for revisiting the SC’s K Veeraswami judgment.
• 2The 1991 ruling deals with the filing of criminal cases against judges and sets a high bar for initiating action against them.
• 3Article 124 prescribes the removal of a judge through impeachment, which is largely a political process.
• 4The SC developed the mechanism of the in-house inquiry to deal with complaints against judges.
• 5In a 3-2 verdict, the SC held that while a judge can be considered a public servant for a corruption case, the sanction must come from the CJI.
• 6In 2019, then CJI Ranjan Gogoi gave permission to the CBI to register an FIR against Justice S N Shukla of the Allahabad High Court.