NEW DELHI: In a classic case of fence eating the grass, a UP trial court was cast in an adverse light when one of its court clerks, taking advantage of a man’s drinking habit, made him sign a sale deed for a portion of his ancestral property and a civil judge gave orders to police to enforce the sale.Allahabad HC found that using the judicial process, the court clerk threw out a woman and her three children from the house using the sale deed signed by her husband in a drunken stupor. HC ordered the court clerk to restore the property to the woman within 48 hours and pay her Rs 1 lakh, and recommended disciplinary proceedings against the clerk and civil judge.Senior advocate H S Phoolka tried his best to project the clerk as an innocent victim of conspiracy before Supreme Court and said the HC had been unusually harsh. However, he failed to evoke sympathy from a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi.The CJI said such an act by a court clerk should have been adequate reason for the district judiciary to send him packing. “Sometimes, we need to pass such harsh orders when it is found that a conspiracy is hatched within the four walls of the court, where people come for justice,” the bench said.“We must send the right message. If we do not pass harsh orders in such incidents, it will be difficult for people to repose faith and trust in the judiciary. We see no ground to change a single word in the HC judgment. HC is absolutely right in passing the order,” it added.Dismissing the court clerk’s appeal, SC said, “In the peculiar circumstances of the case, HC has issued these unusual directions to ensure public faith and trust in the judicial system is maintained. HC directions are befitting the facts of the case. None of the observations and consequential directions require our interference.”The court clerk, a peshkar in the court of the chief judicial magistrate, obtained a sale deed in his favour from the woman’s husband dated Feb 14, 2024 for a portion of the undivided residential house, despite knowing full well that the property had not been divided between the brothers and co-sharers of the property. On Jan 13 last year, the woman resisted eviction action initiated through an interim order passed by the trial court. Following this, the court clerk obtained another decree and, with the help of police, evicted her.SC said it was unprecedented for a civil court to pass a decree on the day a suit was filed, and without issuing notice to co-sharers, who were not made parties to the suit.
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