Judge J W Singh moves HC to evade arrest

MUMBAI, MARCH 5: A week after being declared as a proclaimed offender, absconding suspended Sessions Court judge Jaysingh Wadhu Singh has ...

MUMBAI, MARCH 5: A week after being declared as a proclaimed offender, absconding suspended Sessions Court judge Jaysingh Wadhu Singh has knocked on the doors of the Bombay High Court urging for personal liberty and challenging the police action to book him under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), 1999.

Singh’s petition, which also challenges the vires of the act, is likely to come up before a division bench of the Bombay High Court this week.

Among the eight respondents to the petition are the Government of Maharashtra, state chief secretary and the commissioner of police.

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In his petition filed on March 3, the judge has prayed that the MCOCA provisions invoked against him be strusck down and has urged for an interim direction to the police not to arrest him till his petition is disposed of.

Singh says the apex court had on January 13 rejected his appeal against the high court order which did not grant him anticipatory bail on December 17, 1999. The Supreme Court had opined that matters which had not been agitated before the high court could not be raised in the apex court.

In his defence, the judge had said that the police had claimed to have intercepted telephonic conversations between him, a now-deceased lawyer Liyakat Ali Shaikh and another accused (underworld don) Chhota Shakeel which were recorded violating MCOCA and other laws. Hence, he had argued, the evidence against him should not be relied upon.

He had also pleaded that the decision to book him under Section 3(1)(ii)(2) of MCOCA, which provides for abetement of organised crime, is illegal and violative of the Constitution.