Supreme Court expunges Delhi High Court's adverse remarks against judge who criticised Police

The Supreme Court on Friday allowed a plea by a Delhi judicial officer to expunge adverse remarks made against him by the Delhi High Court after he criticised the Delhi police in a judicial order. .A Bench of Justices Abhay S Oka, Ahsanuddin Amanullah and Augustine George Masih pronounced the verdict today."The appeals are allowed. Adverse remarks against the appellant ... are hereby expunged.," the Bench said..The Bench in its verdict noted that adverse comments harm a judge's career."Whenever action is proposed against a judicial officer on the administrative side, he gets the full opportunity to clarify and explain his position. But if such personal adverse observations are made in a judgment, the Judicial Officer’s career gets adversely affected."It was pointed out that the number of judges had not even reached the ratio of 25 per million, even as litgation workload and population has substatially increased. "The Judges have to work under stress ... every Judge, irrespective of his post and status, is likely to commit errors. In a given case, after writing several sound judgments, a judge may commit an error in one judgment due to the pressure of work or otherwise ... the higher court can always correct the error. However, while doing so, if strictures are passed personally against a Judicial Officer, it causes prejudice to the Judicial Officer, apart from the embarrassment involved."Even constitutional courts are prone to making mistakes, it was added."Therefore, personal criticism of Judges or recording findings on the conduct of Judges in judgments must be avoided.".Advocate Sagar Suri appeared for the judge..The Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) in question had passed strictures against the police officers investigating a case involving the alleged theft of sarees from a shop.Apart from criticising the investigating officers, the judicial officer had also directed the police commissioner to launch an inquiry into the conduct of the officials in question.However, the Delhi High Court later objected to these strictures by the ASJ and deleted his directives to the police.The ASJ then approached the Supreme Court after the Delhi High Court refused to recall its adverse remarks.The top court had sought the Delhi High Court's response in the matter on January 10 this year.Additional Solicitor General (ASG) SV Raju appeared for the Delhi High Court..The case had led the Supreme Court to criticise a rule laid down by the Delhi High Court which limited powers of trial courts in censuring and criticising police officers for their conduct in investigating a criminal case.The top court had observed that the rule appears to dictate how trial courts should write their judgments and, therefore, should be struck down.The rule in focus is found in Section 6 of Chapter I, Part H of the Delhi High Court's "Practice in the Trial of Criminal Cases."The rule stated that "it is undesirable for courts to make remarks censuring the actions of police officers unless the remarks are strictly relevant to the case."During the course of the hearings, the top court was told that the Delhi High Court had approved the deletion of the said rule, and was awaiting the concerned authorities to greenlight the same..[Read judgment]