When Prashant Bhushan took on CJI, stormed out of Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Friday witnessed an unpleasant scene when eminent lawyer and former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Prashant Bhushan got into an argument with Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and stormed out of the courtroom.

The incident took place during the hearing of a plea alleging bribery in the name of judges by a 5-judge bench.

According to Bhushan, the bench heard persons who were not even parties to the case, but refused to hear him, who is a petitioner.

Bar and Bench quoted the senior lawyer as telling the bench, “You have heard persons who are not even parties to the case for an hour. If Your Lordships want to pass an order without hearing me, then do it”.

Later, Bhushan took to Twitter to vent his anger on the development in the top court.

He tweeted, “Extraordinary proceedings in SC today in the case seeking SIT Investigation in medical college bribery case involving the CJI! CJI presided over a hand picked bench to override yesterday's order referring this case to top 5 judges. This despite having a direct conflict of interest”.

“The court proceedings were extraordinary in that the CJI was asking all kinds of lawyers who were not parties to say things against the order of Court 2, w/o hearing petitioner. He tried to justify his role in the medical college case & speak against 'impropriety' of Court 2,” his next tweet said.

Speaking to ANI, the lawyer termed it as a “black day” in Indian judiciary.

A plea alleging bribery in the name of judges was on Thursday referred to a Constitution Bench comprising five senior most Supreme Court judges. According to the plea, bribes were being taken using the names of apex court judges promising to secure favourable settlement of a case.

The CBI FIR has alleged that the ex-High court judge and others had hatched a conspiracy and demanded huge gratification assuring favourable settlement of a case relating to medical college admissions in the apex court.